


Fortitudine Vincimus

by Guede



Series: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, And Alberto Is A Saint, Angels are Dicks, Angst and Humor, Crack Treated Seriously, Fallen Angels, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Miscommunication, Polyamory, Self-Sacrifice, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Temporary Character Death, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 07:35:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 54,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5859961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fall-out from Asmodeus continues in some unexpected ways, as it turns out that not everyone is what they seem.  Though Zlatan is still a demon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fortitudine Vincimus

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted in 2007.

“I was thinking something heartier. The weather forecast says it’ll be rainy and cold, so people would want some substance to their food. Oh, did you straighten out that business with the truffles?” The last step before the top let out a high, slow whine as Sandro stepped on it. Then there came the two thumps of his shoes dropping beside the door, and the soft, shushing sound of his bare feet padding after Paolo.

It was already a cloudy night, Paolo noted, looking up through the skylight above him. Something dark, perhaps a bird, swooped lazily across the moon, distracting him for a moment, but then he gave himself a shake and half-turned to drop his handful of mail on the table. “Mostly. They’re sending a double shipment, no extra charge, to make up for it, but I don’t know…I’m not so sure their reliability’s going to improve. I’ll keep an eye on it.”

Heating bill—that Paolo shuffled between his little and ring finger, holding it out of the way as he sorted through the envelopes. He paused a moment at one with an unfamiliar logo in the upper left corner, then was dropping it when a light touch grazed the side of his jaw. His eyes closed reflexively and he started to turn, but when his chin encountered no resistance he opened his eyes to find Sandro a few feet away.

The other angel frowned as he poked his foot at a scorch-mark on the floorboards. He had a plate of what appeared to be holiday cookies in one hand and it bobbed up and down as he rubbed his toes over the burned spot. “Damn it, I told him to fix this. If he’s going to mess about _here_ \--”

“He said he’d do it when he came back tonight,” Paolo reminded Sandro, keeping his tone mild. Then he cocked his head. “Where are those from? Are you changing the desserts too?”

“That idiot’ll probably say his back hurts or he pulled a thigh muscle and not get to—hmm?” The stormy wrinkles of Sandro’s brow smoothed, then remade themselves as he looked first at Paolo, then at the plate in his hand. For a moment it seemed as if he didn’t remember himself how he’d gotten the dish, but then his face cleared up. “Oh…I don’t know. Somebody left them in the kitchen, and I just thought putting them away in the walk-ins would be too confusing. If I forgot or didn’t have time to take them back up when we opened, the prep cooks would just eat them without asking whose they were.”

Paolo didn’t hide his smile, but he did redirect it to the possible bill he was slitting open with his thumbnail. “You still have such a pessimistic view of people.”

“It’s not pessimistic, it’s realistic. I’ve had enough lunches of mine go missing to know…and these look really good. Whoever forgot them will be regretting it.”

Something about the way Sandro said that struck Paolo as odd. He looked up again, then blinked as Sandro hastily jerked his head up, looking back with eyes a little too wide. Then Paolo’s gaze fell to Sandro’s hand, or rather, the lack of it, as Sandro had abruptly pushed that behind his back. “Were you…”

“I was just look—oh, well, they do look tasty. Come see for yourself,” Sandro said, a touch defensive. He held out the plate.

After a moment, Paolo bemusedly tossed the heating bill to the side and came over. The cookies were absolute perfection to look at, rich dark brown beneath a light dusting of powdered sugar. They were shaped in irregular ovals and had wide, jagged cracks in them that promised a lovely crunch in the mouth, and as Paolo leaned further over them, his nose tingled with the smell of spices.

“Hey.” As the fingers backed away from the tap they’d given Paolo’s hand, Sandro’s smile moved into view. It was a thing of beauty itself, and always gave Paolo a moment’s pause—though even his biased eye couldn’t eliminate the smug air from it. “I see you agree.”

“In looking,” Paolo said. He carefully curled his fingers—how had they sneaked up, anyway?—away from the edge of the dish. Which didn’t provide any clues as to the true owner of the cookies, since it was from their own stock. “They do look wonderful. But—well, wouldn’t the obvious suspect be—”

“Adriana left to visit her mother yesterday, remember?” Sandro shrugged, then absently brushed his hair back from his eyes. He gazed downwards, his lips pushing minutely in and out as he thought. “And Andrea’s specialty really is pastries, not baked goods. So unless we’ve got undiscovered talent in the kitchen…”

They stood with their heads bent over the plate, silently regarding the cookies for several moments. Once Sandro shifted his supporting hand and the little ovals moved, a few of them falling over so fine white puffs of sugar rose into the air, sweetening the strengthening scents of cinnamon, orange, almonds and figs. It blended wonderfully together into a warm, deliciously pungent aroma that seemed to gently fill Paolo’s nose, stroking down it like a sunbeam would across the top of his head.

“They’re not ours,” Sandro said. He sounded a little mournful.

Paolo glanced at him, but soon the plate demanded his attention again. “No, they aren’t. We’re holding them for safekeeping, since clearly somebody spent a lot of time and effort on these. Clearly…”

They stared at the plate a little longer. Then Sandro coughed low in his throat and moved his weight to his other foot, which of course caused the cookies to move again, and thus release more of their tempting fragrance into the air. “Why is it so much harder now? I remember it used to be easy to do the morally right act.”

“I don’t think we had a particularly good sense of smell before, actually. We didn’t need it.” Once again Paolo’s hand sneaked up without him realizing. He caught it resting its fingertips on the rim of the plate and mentally scolded it, but the wicked thing refused to withdraw. Instead it plucked up a cookie, and oh…the cookie felt just as crunchy as it looked. This was going to be difficult. “Sandro, it would be very bad logic to reason that there are so many it’d be hard to notice one being gone.”

“Yes. You don’t know if the owner counted or not. Maybe the number’s important,” Sandro mumbled. His eyes were fixed on the cookie in Paolo’s hand, and as Paolo looked at him, a flash of pink swept over Sandro’s lower lip. “Anyway, a transgression is a transgression no matter the magnitude.”

Paolo nodded in firm agreement, but to be honest he watched the cookie move towards his mouth with far more anticipation than muted horror. And of course Sandro didn’t move to stop him.

It _tasted_ …after a long, glorious moment, Paolo realized the world hadn’t in fact gone out and opened his eyes. He stared at Sandro.

Sandro raised his eyebrows. His eyes were starting to glitter, like when he was—was interested, but there was an odd restraint to the way he tipped his head. “You make that face when he sticks his—his—does that with his tongue. You know.”

“It’s good,” Paolo managed to mumble. Now he understood the shadow on Sandro’s face, and deep down somewhere he was feeling both irritated and guilty that even now Sandro had a difficult time with that, but…the cookie was so _good_. “It’s…”

He couldn’t explain, but his hand was still managing situations very well, if not very honorably, on its own. It pushed forward and popped the remainder of the cookie into Sandro’s mouth. His fingertips brushed Sandro’s lips along the way, and when he pulled them back, the faint dampness from that touch was beginning to cake the powdered sugar to his skin.

Sandro blinked, licked the crumbs off his lower lip, and chewed. Then he stopped, his lashes fluttering madly, and for a moment he actually rocked in place, as if his knees were giving way. “ _Mmmm_.”

They looked at each other. Then they looked at the plate. Still a little stricken at what they were doing, Paolo made the mistake of pressing his fingers to his lips and thus ended up with an extra taste plus the powdered sugar. The last little bit of his resistance abruptly whisked away.

He pushed his finger further into his mouth, rubbing his tongue over and under the nail, then curling it back to spread the melting sweetness about the inside of his mouth. The sugar tempered the lingering remains of the cookie, which tended to prickle sharply as his finger dislodged crumbs from under the gums, beneath his teeth…Paolo poked a bit hard at a molar, then blinked rapidly at how vivid his finger suddenly looked, all wet and gleaming with spit. Apparently he’d closed his eyes again.

“You’ve got it on your face,” Sandro said. His voice was a little rough at the ends of words, and when Paolo looked up, he was a little startled at how close Sandro was.

So close Sandro was actually craning his head to keep his nose from poking Paolo in the eye. The dish was gone, oddly, and Paolo was turning to look for it when Sandro curled two fingers under his chin and swept a thumb across his left cheek, running it over the corner of his mouth. He went still except for his mouth, which couldn’t help but fall open a little as the touch warmed his skin. And the warmth remained even after Sandro had let his hand slip back, actually seeming to grow in the absence so it spread back towards Paolo’s ear and down his tightening throat.

Sandro looked at him, eyes simmering beneath the deceptively fragile lashes, and then bent to lick at the white smear on his thumb. Except Paolo’s mouth closed over it first—he almost lost it a moment later as Sandro tried to pull away, but he had a good grip on the other angel’s wrist and so Sandro only ended up losing his balance and having to put his other hand on Paolo’s shoulder.

“Paolo,” he said, tone protesting. His hand on Paolo’s shoulder pushed, then pulled as Paolo surprised himself with how defiantly and quickly he sucked Sandro’s thumb clean. “You—”

Paolo let the digit slide out of his mouth as he looked up. The motion drew them even nearer, till the faint heat of Sandro’s body and not just that vague, constant awareness of him that Paolo had told Paolo where he was. “Hmm?”

The pupils of Sandro’s eyes snapped to pinpoints, then gradually widened till they crowded out the irises to mere slivers. His fingers crooked so they brushed the edge of Paolo’s jaw.

Then they were on Paolo’s cheek, pushing rough and hard, and Sandro’s other hand was all but ripping off Paolo’s shoulder in its eagerness to help in the other direction. Though to be fair, Paolo had thrown his free arm around Sandro’s waist with—well, it was a minor miracle in itself that they didn’t fall over, and never mind how they avoided losing any teeth with the way their mouths came together.

It was only for the briefest moment. Then Paolo was dragging his hand up Sandro’s back, impatient with how his fingers were catching on the wrinkles of the other angel’s shirt, and Sandro had both hands cupping Paolo’s face but was turning and twisting his head anyway, trying to keep up as his tongue ran riot all over the inside of Paolo’s mouth. It dove into the hollows beneath Paolo’s tongue before tickling bone-meltingly at the edge of Paolo’s bottom lip—Paolo gripped Sandro’s shoulder, struggling to hold him still, and then snatched at Sandro’s hair. His fingers did close on a good bunch of silky curls that instantly entangled his hand, made it impossible to withdraw even though Sandro’s sudden lean against him necessitated a _much_ sturdier support, or else his knees were going to—

They did. His left one buckled and he stumbled, his fingers catching on Sandro’s hair and shirt-sleeve. Sandro made a startled noise and dropped one hand to Paolo’s upper arm, accidentally hitting it lower so Paolo…well, he tore open Sandro’s cuff on the way down, and distinctly heard the button ping off some piece of furniture from the force.

He did land on a knee so it wasn’t a complete collapse, but that was more due to his unwavering determination not to lose an inch of Sandro’s warmth pressing against him than any real concern with his dignity. Or his personal safety, or else he would’ve just fallen and not had pain explode up his leg—he reflexively bit at Sandro’s lip, Sandro flexed stiff fingers against Paolo’s face, and…and pushed them over, rendering the whole point moot. He was making small eager sounds low in his throat, letting their vibrations tease at Paolo’s lips as he kissed Paolo messily, openmouthed so less than half of their mouths were touching at any given time but that had _nothing_ to do with how good it felt. Nothing at all.

Paolo groaned, pulled hard on the hand he still had in Sandro’s hair and ended up rolling himself onto his side as Sandro’s head went back, as Sandro’s soft lips slipped away to be replaced with a long expanse of throat. Mouthing at it, Paolo wriggled forward, working his elbow behind the other angel’s back so he could use it to lever Sandro into him, knees to knees and thighs to thighs. He winced as fingertips ground into his jaw and arm, then instinctively twisted away. For a moment he regretted that, since they disappeared and he could feel their absence like an arctic breeze.

But then they reannounced themselves, wedging hard between Paolo and Sandro so at first Paolo tried to trap them with his weight, squeeze out their interference. It took him quite a few seconds to realize what their real aim was, but by then Sandro had nudged his leg between Paolo’s knees and taken advantage of Paolo’s resulting stutter to undo about half of Paolo’s shirtbuttons. Not gracefully, not easily, but the fumbling of Sandro’s fingers, the frustrated hisses, even the occasional nick of a nail against Paolo’s skin—that made his breath catch nonetheless. Then he inhaled sharply and rocked forward, pushing his bared stomach into Sandro’s caressing hands, his mouth firmly put to the point of one winging collarbone. He nipped and licked at that, varying according to how fast Sandro happened to be breathing, as palms stroked down his sides, up his chest, smooth one way and then delightfully roughened the other.

Then Sandro moved, but his mouth presented itself before Paolo could miss his throat; his lashes tickled Paolo’s cheekbone, then settled as he yielded his lips to Paolo’s insistence. But his hands refused to give ground, and in fact they advanced farther, lower, till Paolo’s hands suddenly jerked out of Sandro’s hair and raked their nails down the other angel’s back. Several long strands ripped away to snarl around Paolo’s fingers, and the scratching itself couldn’t have been—then again, Sandro was moaning and hitching even harder against Paolo. And anyway, Paolo’s hands were acting on their own initiative again, rounding against Sandro’s buttocks before dragging forward, twisting up the cloth of Sandro’s trousers as they futilely tried to remove the barrier.

Eventually it did occur to Paolo that there was another way to go about that, and he was trying it when his climax slipped up on him and threw him, breathless and shocked, into Sandro’s arms. He blinked hard, the world shaking around him, vaguely noting the sudden cooling stickiness on his hands.

Sandro blurrily stopped and looked at Paolo, frowning. “Are you—”

Heat rushed into Paolo’s face. Which cleared his head and was helpful that way, but—he grimaced and leaned forward more to distract himself than for any other reason. Truly, but the moment his lips touched Sandro’s—he blinked again a moment later, his sticky hands feverishly pulling down Sandro’s undone trousers, the rest of him clinging to Sandro as if the roof might cave in on them any minute, and thought it was a little odd. And then the wave of urgency that’d roared up in him swept away that thought to…to somewhere far, far from Sandro’s mouth and hands. Lean hips in Paolo’s palms, slender ankles hiking themselves up Paolo’s calves as they rolled over, rocked the other way, somehow twisted out of their clothes so their bodies could join freely together.

Not too much later, Sandro’s eyes suddenly widened and he bucked hard against Paolo’s thigh, then buried his face in Paolo’s shoulder and clutched apologetically at Paolo’s back. Paolo barely registered it, all his attention taken up by and deeply furious with the damn bottle of olive oil that just wouldn’t open for him, but then it did and its golden stream was still pooling across the floor when he bent back down to Sandro. Kissed Sandro’s jaw, cheekbone, mouth as Sandro lifted his head, and then kissed Sandro’s mouth hard and long and deep as Sandro’s knees jerked up in protest at the chilly oil Paolo dripped up the other angel’s inner thighs. Some sort of apology made its way out of Paolo’s lips, but he didn’t hesitate. Couldn’t hesitate, that intense need driving him on and on, and so instead he ran his mouth along Sandro’s outstretched neck, proffered jawline. The tops of the shoulders, the middle of the chest, the brown nipples, till Sandro was twisting and clawing at him, trying to get them pulled together before the world crashed before they were ready _again_ \--

\--but Paolo was at least in the other angel by then, his hands stuck to Sandro’s hips with sweat and oil and come, his head tucked into Sandro’s neck as Sandro drew restless patterns across his back with fingertips, teasing him till he could lift his head, brace his knees, and make those caressing, tormenting hands fall still. He moved and Sandro moved with him, around him, against him, and whatever else was going on, Paolo knew this, knew it and trusted it and loved it. And so he let himself be carried away, knowing it’d come right in the end

* * *

Sandro took a deep breath, attracting Paolo’s bleary attention. The other angel closed his eyes, clearly concentrating very hard; his muscles tensed up from the cords in his neck to the tendons in his legs, and then…Sandro abruptly went slack, his hands flopping weakly against the floor. “All right. I can’t get up. I can’t even feel anything below my waist, actually.”

“Sorry.” After a bit of cautious flexing, Paolo decided he probably could walk. If he really needed to, and managed not to slip on the oily floor, and pretended his back was in working condition.

“What was that, anyway?” Sandro said, and Paolo looked up a bit more sharply this time. But Sandro was just wrinkling his nose and scrubbing at the floorboards with one hand. “Is that rosemary? Oh…damn it, was that that sample we were supposed to try with dinner?”

Paolo winced in advance, pushed himself over—his leg fell over Sandro’s calf, making Sandro hiss and curl into Paolo’s side—and squinted at the bottle. “Yes?”

“Damn it.” Then Sandro fell quiet, his head tipped against the point of Paolo’s shoulder, his hands half-curled so their knuckles brushed Paolo’s ribs. He stirred slightly when Paolo drifted one hand down his back, but settled again, a contented noise slipping from him, as Paolo rested that hand on his hip. “Mmm. The viscosity was fine.”

After a moment, Paolo laughed. He pulled Sandro closer, but had to loosen his grip as the other angel lifted his head, a loose, amused smile gracing his face. Sandro moved one hand over Paolo’s side and nuzzled closer, his eyes and smile narrowing a little. Not growing annoyed, but clearly sharpening, concentrating into something—Paolo inwardly sighed, mustered up something resembling self-control, and leaned back. “Wait. No, really—did this seem…not you, of course, but did the rest seem a little odd to you?”

“What?” Sandro looked around them, then again, as if he hadn’t really registered the mess. “Oh…don’t we usually make it to the bed first? And not—so many times so…early…?”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Paolo said. Though actually he was idly gazing about, wondering if maybe he was imagining things. No real harm had been done and there were other possible explanations, and anyway he could just be overcompensating because he was trying not to be so casual about…

The cookies. They were sitting on the coffee-table, heaped up to the side as if Sandro hadn’t put them down very carefully, and as Paolo looked at them, a faint hint of their smell came to his nose and he felt a corresponding twitch in his gut. Then again…

“Oh.” Sandro had tracked Paolo’s gaze and was now looking at the cookies rather warily. His hand pushed down, then wrapped around Paolo’s fingers, squeezing them a little hard. “You think—”

The phone rang. Well, _a_ phone rang, and after some confused twisting, disentangling of limbs and hip-bumping, Paolo finally managed to locate it in Sandro’s trousers, which were close enough so that Paolo ended up crawling to get them, despite the sudden low ache in his back and knees. He picked up the puddle of cloth, grimacing at the stains on it—the dry cleaner was going to make odd faces and crack jokes Paolo didn’t quite understand again—before extracting the phone. Then he realized he should’ve wiped off his hand first, but…sighing, Paolo just flipped open the phone so he could get it over with. “Hello?”

*Oh, Paolo? It’s Alberto. I’m sorry to be calling so late, but I just realized that I left some—I forgot a plate of cookies I made.* Short breath. *I…it’s sort of important nobody touches them. It—they—well, I’m sorry, but could you just look in the kitchen and see if they’re there?*

* * *

Alberto slumped deep into the corner of the couch, the half of his face that wasn’t grinding itself into his hand looking thoroughly miserable. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even—I just—I’m _so sorry_. I never should’ve even…if you want to fire me, that’s—”

“No,” Sandro said, and then looked a little surprised with himself. He tucked down his head, rubbing at his cheek. Then he straightened and promptly winced. “Look, Gila, it’s clear you didn’t mean for us to eat them, and anyway we shouldn’t have—” he glanced towards Paolo, who felt a burning start in his cheeks again “—and really, what’s important is that we just know what was in them. All right? We need to know if there’s going to be…anything else.”

At that Alberto sat bolt upright, his eyes wide and wild. He clutched white-knuckled at the couch cushions as Sandro and Paolo stared confusedly at him. “Oh, my God, something actually happened? Are you all right? Oh, God, did I poison you?”

“No, no, no.” Paolo pushed himself up, ignoring the way his back cramped, and then got to his feet when it looked like Alberto was going to go off into a panic anyway. “No, we’re fine, it wasn’t—it was fine.” He carefully didn’t look at Sandro. “Just fine. We just want to be careful.”

“Which you always should be with magic,” Sandro added. He hadn’t sounded too harsh, but with the way Alberto was right then, he really just should’ve held his peace. As it was, Alberto seemed to shrink inwards even more. Sandro belatedly looked guilty, but then firmed his expression. “Anyway, what was it? What were you trying to do?”

Mumble. Alberto’s fingers squeezed repeatedly at the couch cushions. After a look towards Paolo, Sandro pointedly cleared his throat.

One jump and terrified look later, Alberto finally managed to lift his head. “I…it’s just Gigi was talking about how his wing still hurts. I was just trying to find something that’d make him feel better, because regular painkillers don’t work, so I…well, I have this old herbal from my grandmother. I didn’t really think…you know…that that would even _work_ , but then…there are angels and people with fangs and I should’ve known…”

Paolo and Sandro looked at each other. Then Paolo moved around Sandro’s chair and sat down at the free end of the sofa. “Gianluigi? You see him? Often?”

He hadn’t seen the other angel since…well, since Gianluigi had come in to warn him about Asmodeus. By the time Paolo and everyone else had returned home after Asmodeus’ death, Gianluigi had been long gone and only Alberto had been waiting at the restaurant, saying something about going downstairs for a mop and then coming back to an empty kitchen. Since then Paolo hadn’t even felt Gianluigi around and had unconsciously assumed he’d left Milan, possibly because of the humiliation of having demons help with his rescue. He hadn’t thought too much on it, more concerned with reconciling Zlatan and Sandro, and with dealing with his own slowly returning powers.

“Well, sometimes. I told him he could come visit me—I wanted to check up on his wing, since it’d been a while since I did any doctoring. I took the stitches out two weeks ago, but he still comes round every few days,” Alberto said. He was looking off to the side, but when he finished he looked over at Paolo. Then Sandro, and then he began to cringe again. “I’m sorry, should I have mentioned that before? I didn’t think it was important.”

“No, aside from the fact that Gigi usually dislikes people so much he’d rather…” Sandro caught Paolo’s warning look and reluctantly changed his comment mid-stream “…so what did you put in those cookies? You were just trying to…come up with some kind of aspirin, right?”

Alberto blinked, then reached into his pockets. He dug around a bit before producing a crumpled piece of paper, which he carefully smoothed out on his knee before passing it to Paolo. “I thought that that was what this was,” he said. “But I don’t know how good the translation was…I used a website to do most of it…”

And had made little notations in Italian, so Paolo didn’t have to struggle too much with Alberto’s misspelled Greek. He skimmed it, then read it again, more slowly. Then he got up and went over to Sandro to let the other angel take a look.

“Seems like the usual quackery,” Sandro muttered. He moved his hand so Paolo could rest a hip on the arm of the chair, then absently put his hand back on top of Paolo’s knee. “This shouldn’t have done anything.”

“No, it shouldn’t have.” Paolo kept his voice low enough so that Alberto wouldn’t be able to hear. Not that the man would’ve been able to understand the language anyway—it just would’ve sounded like so much chiming—but Paolo didn’t want to make Alberto more nervous than he already was. “So…”

Sandro looked at him. Then, much more sharply, at Alberto—who jumped, making Paolo wince—and then back at Paolo, brows incredulously arched. “But…I would’ve felt it! Wouldn’t I?”

“We’re both not what we were, as far as that goes,” Paolo said. Then he paused, trying to word his next comment very carefully. “But…”

“I _like_ Gila. Bad enough Gigi’s pestering him all the time, but you want to have Zlatan threaten to bite off his face too?” Sandro put in. He raised his brows again, looking faintly self-satisfied. But then he sighed, leaning forward to press his head into the side of Paolo’s waist. “You were thinking that, weren’t you?”

Paolo started to touch the top of Sandro’s head, but then remembered Alberto and settled for cupping his hand over Sandro’s shoulder. “Sandro. I like Gila too, but I don’t think…we can explain things perfectly to him. And Zlatan will not eat him, and he does have that mage friend of his, who seems like a very sensible person.”

“Oh, Figo. I forgot about him, but…he’s all right, for all that he seems more fond of demons than angels. I suppose he’d do.” Though when Sandro lifted his head, his nose was still wrinkled in distaste. “But—”

“ _I’ll_ ask Zlatan,” Paolo said firmly. Then he tipped his head and lightly tickled the side of Sandro’s neck. “You had a hard enough time walking downstairs.”

Sandro twitched his nose and mouth, blushed, and buried his face back into Paolo’s side. Chuckling, Paolo wrapped an arm around the other angel’s head and rubbed at Sandro’s back. His weight shifted and he hastily scooted back, not wanting to fall off the chair, and in doing so his gaze came across Alberto’s pale, worried face.

“How much in trouble am I?” the man asked. His voice cracked. “Are…are you going to…”

“No, we’re not firing you. But there is something we’d like you to do, to help you just as much as it’d help…things like this not happening again,” Paolo said. “Calm down, Alberto. It’ll be all right now.”

* * *

“Hang on, I’m coming, damn it!” Zlatan jammed the rest of the intestine into the trash-can, zipped his hands under the sink with some soap, and then whirled about to lunge for the door.

He would’ve made it in a decent time if he’d just stayed indecent, but halfway there he just—he wasn’t embarrassed, but he just didn’t feel like getting into a stupid fight with Sandro. The first half of the day had already given him enough of that, and even the prospect of watching Sandro’s hair gradually go from sleek waves to a snarled frizz, like the strands soaked out the frustration from the angel’s head, wasn’t enough to balance out things. So Zlatan dodged back to the bathroom and slung a towel around himself, and then he answered the door.

Actually, it was Paolo. For a moment, Zlatan was pissed off at himself for not checking more closely and going through all that bother. But then he shrugged that off, deciding to just be grateful he actually didn’t have to suffer Sandro as well as Freddie, a pack of stuck-up necromancers and a couple of random fox-demons—who were really showing up far too often these days, and he really needed to see Figo about that. Later. “Oh, hey.”

Paolo blinked, then jerked up his chin, making both of them aware that Paolo had been staring straight ahead and therefore much too low to be looking at Zlatan’s face. “What have you been doing? You’re covered in mud.”

“What?” Zlatan looked down at himself, then remembered about that and made a face. He absently swiped at a particularly thick streak over his left pectoral, then adjusted his towel so it wasn’t so close to the dirt caked onto his ribs. Then he realized he’d just stained the towel anyway with his muddy fingers and rolled his eyes at himself, pushing away from the doorway. “Yeah, I had a little trouble this morning. Freddie made me help him with these mages who thought they were going to bind him to be their servant—why, I don’t know, since he’s mostly good for making your espresso machine overfroth—and it was up in the mountains.”

He’d gone a couple yards before he noticed no footsteps were following. When Zlatan turned around, he found Paolo still in the doorway, but the moment he looked, Paolo walked a bit jerkily over the threshold before shutting and locking the door. So Zlatan turned back and kept on going to the bathroom, since now that he was thinking about it, the mud was getting really itchy as it dried and he wanted the damn stuff off him.

“So it wasn’t really that big of a deal, but Freddie was a moron and got distracted when one of them toasted his hat. Which was fucking ugly anyway, but he’s weird like that. Honestly, if he and Henrik weren’t friends I would’ve just left him, but they are, so I had to stay around and deal with this golem the mages called up,” Zlatan called back. He absently scratched at his left shoulder, then frowned when he took his fingers away and found them covered in dirt. He _had_ been dressed for the fight, and so how so much of the mud had gotten through a coat and a suit…and he’d really liked that suit too, so Freddie owed him for the next time some duke or marquis of hell showed up. “I kicked its ass, but then it just fell apart on me and golems are just animated dirt, so…lousy morning.”

Halfway through the bathroom doorway, Zlatan remembered that he’d left the soap in the kitchen and turned around to get it. Only Paolo was in the way, walking so close behind Zlatan that Zlatan came within a hair of slamming his elbow into the angel’s face. And Paolo just blinked, looking vaguely puzzled about why Zlatan was sucking in his breath and carefully lowering his arm. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Zlatan said after a moment. He looked at Paolo, then reached back to turn on the sink. Then he bent down so he could get his arm under the water and really scrub at the mud—which had dried to trap his arm-hairs in it and _that_ really fucking hurt when he started scraping off flakes. So Zlatan resigned himself to this taking a little longer and just held his arm in the water, letting the mud soften up first. “Anyway, no need for Sandro to freak out, okay? It was in Switzerland, and I took care of all of it already.”

“Sandro?” When Zlatan looked up, Paolo had his head down and was rubbing at his squeezed-shut eyes, like he had a headache or something. “Oh, all right.”

Once that arm was done, Zlatan switched to the other one. He leaned on the clean one as he squinted up at Paolo. “Are you all right?”

“Mmm? No, I’m fine,” Paolo said. He took down his hand and stared at the far wall with an oddly determined expression on his face.

“Did Sandro say I did something again, and you’re here to ‘work it out’ for us?” Zlatan asked. A little bite crept into his tone and he let it. He just really wasn’t in the mood for getting blamed for crap today.

But Paolo jerked around in what looked like genuine surprise, so it wasn’t that. His brows drew down as he shook his head. “No, it’s not about Sandro. It’s…well, you’re busy now, I can see. I can just—”

“I’m just getting clean. And after all I had to do this morning, I’m not—” Zlatan paused a second, reconsidering his words. Then he shrugged and straightened up, shaking the excess water from his arms. “—look, you’re here so I might as well hear it out, though I’m probably not going to do anything about it till tomorrow. I’m fucking exhausted, so unless it’s another…Paolo?”

Who this time had definitely been staring at Zlatan’s chest, and from the way Paolo reddened and nearly threw himself backwards through the doorway in his effort to yank up his head, it wasn’t because of the mud. Paolo started to raise his hand to his face, then pulled it down when he realized Zlatan was watching him with great interest. His blush got deeper, extending down to his jawline. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“Nothing too important. What were you saying?” Zlatan said. He turned fully around and leaned his hip against the sink, wiping his hands on the towel. Which he felt start to slip, but he didn’t bother hitching it up.

Paolo’s eyes drifted down, but only got to about the bottom of Zlatan’s breastbone before the angel glanced off to the side. He almost rubbed at his face again. “Ah…I was…saying about what?”

“Something about what you were seeing?” Zlatan pursed his lips, trying to keep them flattened out.

“What I was seeing?” Well, Paolo made an effort. He dragged his gaze up to Zlatan’s face, doing an excellent job of pretending his cheeks weren’t pink as the strawberry sorbet he offered in the summer. But he kept rubbing his hands over his thighs, and he was starting to shift on his feet. “Oh. Just that you seem dirty—busy. Busy.” He bit his lip. “I can wait outside till you’re done.”

Before he could withdraw, Zlatan pivoted on one heel to reach through and across the doorway. Not really for any reason except making Paolo slide further into the bathroom, though Zlatan did go through the bother of messing with some keys on a side-table before he stepped back. “No, I’m not. Busy, anyway. I’m pretty dirty.”

“I suppose you…are,” Paolo said. He sounded a bit strangled. He finally stopped rubbing his legs, but just so he could twist one hand around his other wrist as he—unconsciously, it seemed—edged towards the sink counter. “You probably want to clean up.”

“Yeah, I was doing that. You want to give me a hand?” Zlatan genially asked.

Paolo was silent for a moment, his hands pulled in to his chest. He looked at Zlatan and the muscles in his face tried very hard not to twitch. “You’re teasing me.”

“Well, you’re so _awkward_ about this still. You and Sandro, like nobody ever told you it’s okay to look.” Zlatan slid forward a little bit, grinning. “Fine, I’m covered with mud. What do you think? Oh, I caught you already—just _look_.”

He moved forward a little more, and Paolo’s eyes briefly dropped before shooting back to Zlatan’s face. The angel’s lips thinned out as Paolo drew back till the edge of the sink stopped him; he glanced down at that, then back up in a hurry when Zlatan put his hands on Paolo’s hips. Just there, nothing else touching yet, though in a couple minutes Zlatan’s back was going to start hurting from leaning like that.

“I think you look—muddy,” Paolo said after a long moment. His blush looked painful. He twisted his hands around to pluck at his shirt.

“And do you like that? Muddy?” Zlatan sidled closer. He bumped his foot against Paolo’s, watched the angel convulsively look down and to the side, and then pushed his feet in on either side of Paolo’s. He leaned down, his nose just short of Paolo’s cheek as his chest bumped Paolo’s hands. “Would you like to fuck muddy?”

Paolo stopped breathing for a moment. Then he let out a long, shaky breath, his hips shifting roughly beneath Zlatan’s hands. “Yes.”

And he looked annoyed when Zlatan laughed and straightened up to look properly at him. “Oh, honestly, you could just say that instead of standing there like an idiot.”

“Well, I—say what, exactly? Say get that mud on my clothes and fuck me till I can’t walk?” Paolo snapped, shoving at Zlatan. “That sounds sil—”

Zlatan ducked and pushed his tongue into Paolo’s mouth, which moved for a few more seconds around it before suddenly going soft. Paolo sagged, his hands uncurling to press against Zlatan’s chest, then to dig in a little as Zlatan pinned him against the sink. Then they slid upwards, scraping through the mud as Paolo put his arms around Zlatan’s neck and let them fully lean against each other. He was moaning by the time Zlatan pulled away.

“Hey, it works,” Zlatan told him. “And a lot better than ‘you’re busy, let me just go outside to stare at your ass’.”

Paolo blinked a few times, his eyes going from hazy to puzzled to irritated. “I was not staring at your—”

“You were, and it’s a good ass so you should be.” Then Zlatan kissed him again, long and hard, through Paolo’s half-hearted pushing and twisting till Paolo finally gave in. And past that, through the reciprocity and the moaning until he finally had Paolo limp against him, barely hanging on to his shoulders.

He let Paolo breathe a little then. Just slipped his mouth to the side, letting the desperate rasping gulp ghost over his cheek, and then kept teasing, easing his mouth across Paolo’s lower lip, then back so their mouths were barely touching. Paolo chased him, but Zlatan withdrew to keep the contact to the bare minimum, waiting till Paolo sank back in frustration. Then he dove in, deep and hungry.

Paolo lost his balance there. Which was a little early for him, but Zlatan was okay with it since it made it a lot easier to turn them around. He kicked shut the door, then pushed Paolo up against it, pulling the angel’s hands off his shoulders to pin them on either side of Paolo’s head. Then he kissed Paolo again, messy and nipping. He dropped to Paolo’s jaw, licked and bit his way down that, then flicked his tongue around the curve of Paolo’s ear as the angel gasped and twisted against him. Paolo’s fingers brushed at Zlatan’s knuckles, futilely trying to get him to let go, but Zlatan just craned his head and pressed his open mouth to the underside of Paolo’s jaw. Teeth a little out, and Paolo went slack again.

He watched Zlatan with dazed eyes as Zlatan pecked his mouth, then slid down to bite off the top three buttons of Paolo’s shirt. To go any further, Zlatan had to pull Paolo’s hands down with him, but Paolo wasn’t resisting now so that wasn’t a problem. The towel was, sticking between Zlatan’s legs and somehow getting a corner stuck in kind of an inconvenient place—Zlatan rolled his hips, then swiveled to just rub the towel off against Paolo’s leg when that didn’t do it. Paolo briefly pressed back, his wrists straining their tendons into Zlatan’s palms, before he fell to slide a little further down the door.

That put his neck to Zlatan’s mouth instead of his chest, which was—well, nice, and made it easy to get some breathy little noises from Paolo, but hadn’t been what Zlatan had been going for. So he kept sinking, but somehow never seemed to actually get any lower. And then his knee hit the floor and he realized Paolo was just puddling along with him, knees not working any more, eyes so glazed the angel might not even have been able to see Zlatan. Just as an experiment, Zlatan nipped at Paolo’s nipple through his shirt and Paolo jerked hard, his eyes—yeah, he hadn’t been seeing Zlatan before. He was now, though. “Please…”

“Hmm?” Zlatan pulled Paolo’s wrists off the wall, turning his hands on them to slide his fingers down to tangle with Paolo’s. He licked a circle around the bitten nipple, then nuzzled away the intervening cloth and sucked properly at it.

Whatever Paolo was going to say, he lost it. Instead he moaned, his head lolling against the door, his hips moving restlessly back and forth across the bottom of the door. He let his knees fall open as Zlatan nudged himself between them, then very clearly lifted his right leg as Zlatan dropped to support himself with elbows on Paolo’s thighs.

After a moment, Zlatan yanked Paolo down, fully onto the floor. He briefly felt a little—well, concerned—when Paolo’s head seemed to hit the tile, but then Paolo’s hands were clenching at his, trying to make him go up, so he figured Paolo was fine. And so he turned his attention to getting Paolo’s trousers undone, then to nosing past the halves of the fly as Paolo’s struggling nicely pulled those apart. He let his tongue play around, tasting skin here, a rare coarse hair there, a surprise patch of sweat pooling in the crease of the thigh…eventually he got around to tugging the trousers down the rest of the way.

By then Paolo was so limp Zlatan didn’t need to hold his hands down. He breathed in sharply when Zlatan put a hand on each knee, then did try to lift his head as Zlatan dragged his tongue up the inside of the left thigh. But Zlatan took a bite of the flesh there—grinned when he heard Paolo’s head thumping back down. He let go and looked at the paired semi-circles of little red indentations, liking how they broke up the smooth stretch of skin. Licked at them, then worked his way higher, noting how Paolo’s breathing sped up till Zlatan abruptly pulled away just short of the flushed base of Paolo’s cock, and then Paolo let out a frustrated groan.

He even managed to flop a hand in Zlatan’s direction, so Zlatan dragged the angel under him, pinning Paolo’s wrists back down, and then just pressed his leg against Paolo’s prick, trapping that between their thighs. Held it and the rest of Paolo still, though Paolo did his damnedest to buck, slide, get something going. The look in his eyes now was still pretty hazed-over, but the frustration—and the desperation—was growing in leaps and bounds. “ _Zlatan_.”

“What?” Zlatan idly nibbled at Paolo’s jaw, then leaned back.

Paolo stared up at him, mouth bruised red as a freshly-cut strawberry, face shining all over from sweat and framed in the draggling curls that had matted to his forehead and cheeks. The angel’s eyes had narrowed a little, trying to project resolve in the face of—then Paolo slumped back, his lips parting, eyelashes fluttering. “Fuck me?” he asked, soft and hesitant.

For a moment Zlatan was still. Then he dropped down onto Paolo, all his amusement transmuted to a ravenous need to _have_ that mouth and eyes and body, in every fucking way. And Paolo rose to meet him, hands wrapping around Zlatan’s back and shoulders.

* * *

It was a good thing Paolo’s shoulder tasted so damn good, Zlatan thought. Otherwise having it jammed into his mouth for so long would’ve definitely been worse than the clammy stickiness all over his belly and upper legs, or the really, really annoying itch of the mud that was _still_ on his back. “Wasn’t that hard, was it?”

“Huh?” Paolo stirred, weakly. His knee tapped Zlatan’s rib, then swung out as he let his calves fall against Zlatan’s back. “Oh. Asking you to—but it sounds so…rude.”

Zlatan snorted, then turned his head so he could laugh without accidentally jamming a fang into Paolo’s shoulder. “You are so awkward when it comes to sex.”

“It sounds like a—a _line_ ,” Paolo protested, sounding a bit huffy now. He slowly unhooked his ankles, then jerkily pulled his right leg off Zlatan. Some part of it hit the sink cabinet and he hissed, stiffening, before going boneless again. “I don’t want—it means a lot to me, and I don’t want to…”

“A ‘line’?” Frowning, Zlatan pushed himself up on his elbows and looked down at the angel. A couple of times he’d caught various customers trying to imply things with Paolo and Sandro, but generally the angels didn’t get it. And when it was so blatant even they couldn’t miss it, they tended to go stiff and robotic in their confusion, not act so casual that they could debate the technique.

Then again, Paolo was going pink again, so it probably wasn’t anything Zlatan needed to kill people for. “The waitstaff—one of them brought in one of those magazines the other day, and were making Alberto take a quiz on flirting. I—actually, about that…well, not the magazine, but about Alberto. We’ve got a little problem with him.”

“You know, I was visiting Figo the other day and Cesc was asking me if I’d eat him if he came by the kitchen. I think he misses Gila messing with his ears,” Zlatan muttered, rolling his eyes. Then he spotted a little bead of sweat pearling on the end of Paolo’s earlobe and flicked out his tongue to lap it up.

Paolo’s eyes followed Zlatan’s tongue, then snapped back to Zlatan’s face so fast Zlatan practically heard the embarrassed click. “He’s been keeping in touch with Gianluigi, and today he tried to make some sort of…treat for him.”

“Gigi?” If there was one thing Sandro was good for, it was condescension—Zlatan had happily adopted the angel’s nickname for Gianluigi, who managed to show he didn’t appreciate the casualness even as he pretended to remain aloof from such things. “Didn’t he run off so he wouldn’t have to say thank-you to me and Henke for saving his ass?”

“Apparently not. Anyway—Zlatan—Gila’s treat—they were cookies and Sandro and I accidentally ate—” Paolo squirmed a little as the forked tip of Zlatan’s tongue tickled his ear “—they didn’t have anything special in them that we could see, but it acted like we had to have sex, right then and there, and Sandro can’t—walk—Zlatan, that’s distracting.”

Zlatan shrugged and bent down to work his tongue further into Paolo’s ear. “That’s the point. So Gila made some cookies and you—”

Okay, Zlatan hadn’t really been paying attention to Paolo. Well, not to Paolo’s words, when the rest of him was so much more attractive, all slick with sweat and rather prettily nibbled, if Zlatan did say so himself. But he did sort of let the words rattle around in his head, and got enough meaning from it that made him pause to think more on them.

Then he sat bolt upright—Paolo hissed and banged his feet around, belatedly reminding Zlatan that he…well, his cock wasn’t in Paolo now, and from the look on Paolo’s face, it’d been a rough exit. Which Zlatan did feel a little bad about, but Gila? Talk about being completely blindsided. “He fed you two cookies? That made you fuck? That little shit, I’m going to—”

“You won’t eat him,” Paolo said. A little on the hasty side since he was trying and failing to sit up, but his tone was firm enough to make Zlatan look seriously at him. “No, don’t get mad at him. It was a mistake, and it’s mostly mine and Sandro’s fault that we ate them…”

“Because you said he made them for Gigi. Oh…did he finally snap and go insane from finding out angels and demons are real? Because whatever the fuck he put in those, it’s not going to be enough to get that ramrod out of Gigi’s ass long enough,” Zlatan snapped. He was calming down some, but he still wasn’t all that fond of some stupid human trying magic around Paolo. Sandro already did enough of that and he did know what he was doing, but he and Zlatan still had weekly fights over how idiotic he was. “Anyway, it’s just a stupid thing to do. Gigi’s an angel and he can’t have sex.”

Paolo pursed his lips a few times. He tried to draw up his knee, but winced and put his hand down between his legs. “Zlatan, Gila wasn’t trying to get Gianluigi to have sex with him. He was going for something else, and anyway, the herbs he used shouldn’t have done anything, but…well, they did. So I was wondering if you could take him to see Figo…”

“Or I could just eat him, and then I don’t have to worry about some human calling up Beelzebub while I’m in the shower. This is what I have to put with at work! I come here because I’m fed up with that and I’d like to have some time where I can change clothes, have some pizza, fuck you…” For the first bit of the rant, Zlatan was too busy throwing up his hands and wanting to break Gila’s neck, but given where he was sitting, he couldn’t help looking at Paolo. Still sweaty and flushed, shoulders heaving a little as he tried to catch up on his breath, expression a strange but appealing mixture of pained and deeply satisfied as he pressed his…hand up between his…buttocks. Zlatan blinked. “What’s the matter? Sore?”

It took Paolo a moment to adjust to the subject change. He frowned. “Well, yes. It’s odd—it almost feels wrong to not have anything in…”

“Oh.” On second thought, eating Gila would require leaving this alone, and Zlatan never liked letting Paolo be. Especially when he was making that startled face just at Zlatan eeling up between his legs again to lay light fingers against his thigh. “Here, let me—”

Before Paolo could protest, Zlatan pushed his hand aside and slipped in a couple of fingers. Plenty of oil was still smeared up inside the angel—it had tightened a little since Zlatan had pulled out, but that just made two fingers a perfect fit. And Paolo seemed to agree, drawing a sharp, quick breath as he looked up at Zlatan, uncertain but faintly curious. Zlatan twisted his fingers a little and Paolo’s hand clamped down on Zlatan’s wrist. Paolo’s knees jerked inwards, but were blocked by Zlatan’s body; Zlatan bent down and ran his mouth up and down the side of Paolo’s throat till Paolo’s legs started to fall away, then pressed very lightly with his fingertips. And Paolo shuddered, his face screwing up in what almost looked like pain—except he was pulling Zlatan’s fingers _into_ him, a long low sound spilling out of his lips.

“Better?” Zlatan murmured. He watched Paolo arch against the floor, slow and uneven.

“Mmmmm.” Paolo let his head fall against Zlatan’s cheek, then nuzzled at Zlatan’s ear as he pushed his hips down onto Zlatan’s hand. His fingers loosened to stroke over Zlatan’s knuckles. “Please don’t kill my maître d’…”

Zlatan paused. But Paolo didn’t, twisting himself around Zlatan’s fingers with half-closed eyes, his head going back so he offered up the whole lean beauty of his body, vulnerable throat to firm but silken stomach, and…damn it. “Okay.”

Paolo’s eyes opened a little more. He peered up at Zlatan through his lashes, some of them matted into upward-curling spikes, and clenched down on Zlatan’s fingers. “Second time?”

“Fuck,” Zlatan said. He shifted on his arm, just looking. Then he shook his head and moved up between Paolo’s legs. “ _Fuck_. Fuck, yes, second time.”

* * *

Alberto shook his head. He didn’t think he was doing it that hard, but then he noticed that the motion was skewing his feet from side to side and well, maybe he was. So he stopped, since the kitchen had already been scrubbed down for the day and he didn’t want to mar people’s good work with scuff marks. “Um, no, I’m not—I don’t have anything, except my laundry—”

“Oh, well, we’re taking your car so you can just grab it on the way,” Zlatan said, breezing by. Then he stopped. Frowned, like he was forgetting something, and then breezed back the other way.

A couple seconds later, he reappeared with a…a…well, Paolo looked all right, but he was moving very slowly. Not that he seemed particularly disturbed by that fact, or by the fact that he wasn’t wearing exactly the clothes that he’d gone out in, or even that he wasn’t really moving so much as Zlatan was sweeping him along via an arm around his waist. In fact, he was looking about the place with a distant sort of smile on his face.

“I’ll be down in a second, so don’t move.” Zlatan pulled Paolo into the hall, and about a minute later the stairs to the upstairs apartment began to creak.

After a long, puzzled moment, Alberto pushed his confusion to the side and went back to doing the inventory for the night, which he’d been doing before Zlatan had interrupted. Not knowing what was going on wasn’t really a good excuse for not getting his work done, or at least, that was what he’d been told. And so far it’d mostly worked, so he figured it was decent advice.

He did look around after about two minutes had passed, but saw no sign of Zlatan, so he went ahead and checked the last walk-in cooler. Then he did his usual circling of the whole kitchen to check for anything that’d been accidentally left out, put away a couple pots of sauce, and was just hanging up his clipboard when a sudden clattering on the stairs made him drop it.

By the time he’d picked it up, Zlatan was standing in front of him. The—it still was weird thinking of him as a demon. Of course Alberto had had things explained to him about four times and he’d also seen enough to make him believe he wasn’t simply having a very vivid nightmare after eating too much Gorgonzola again. But putting ‘demon’ and ‘Zlatan’ together in his head still seemed disjointed, and while Alberto hadn’t really thought too much about it, or figured that he could come up with any good explanation even if he had, he had a feeling it didn’t actually have much to do with the fact that his grandmother had passed down some odd ideas about religion along with her herbal book.

“You done? Good, come on. We’re kind of late and Figo gets pissy when I’m late,” Zlatan said. He also grabbed Alberto by the elbow and whipped them towards the door to the back-alley so fast that Alberto had to settle for throwing the clipboard in the direction of the wall-hook.

“What? Late? He’s expecting us?” Alberto scrambled for his footing, but the edge of the doorway suddenly loomed up before him. He made some noise and threw up his arm so he clipped his hand instead of his shoulder, then snatched his hand back to press his throbbing fingers against his belly. And then somehow he was in the front passenger seat of his car.

He stared through the windshield. Then he turned to the side just in time to catch Zlatan sprawling into the driver’s seat. Or trying to, at least, since Alberto didn’t drive a very large car and anyway, it was all adjusted to fit him. Which he normally didn’t think about, but watching Zlatan’s knees bang into everything and the contortions Zlatan had to go through to get his arm down between his jammed-up legs to make the seat slide back brought it to mind.

“Um, sorry, if I’d known…” Alberto started. He reached out to help fix the seat-back, since the lever for that was kind of tricky, but there was a white flash accompanied by a menacing _click_ just short of his fingers. Which he jerked back in a hurry. He checked them over to make sure he hadn’t lost any bits, then looked up again. Then he scooted towards the window. Sandro had told Zlatan to “leave Gila be or I’ll use your bones for stock” multiple times, but Alberto wasn’t really sure how seriously Zlatan took that sort of thing. Or how seriously Sandro did, for that matter. “Um. So. We’re seeing Figo?”

“Yeah.” Grunting, Zlatan finally got his legs wedged down in a way that’d keep the steering wheel from hitting his knees. He slouched back in the seat, looking straight ahead with an expression of mixed satisfaction and lingering annoyance. Then he shrugged and did something with his fingers so the car started. His lip lifted on one side to show a pointy tooth, but then he twisted around to see as he backed out the car so Alberto couldn’t tell if he was getting fangy or not. “Shit. Those assholes left the crates all over the place again, so how do they expect anybody to get out of here? Why hasn’t Sandro taken a butcher’s knife to them yet—oh, wait, he doesn’t really _leave_ , does he? Hermit. Hermit _crab_.”

The thing was, Alberto thought now, Zlatan really didn’t fit into ‘demon.’ Not that Alberto really knew much about what those were actually like, of course, but somehow talking about crab and pineapple pizza, teasing Sandro into a day-long fury and getting caught necking with Paolo in utility closets didn’t seem like things that’d be included. Even the occasional fangs and claws—and yellow snake eyes, Alberto had once thought he’d glimpsed—didn’t…well, they looked natural and all when Zlatan had them out, but otherwise he just seemed like a person. A really tall, strong, temperamental person who could spit fire when the burners weren’t working, but still a person.

“So are you still freaking out over there?” Zlatan said. He laughed at Alberto’s start as he gleefully sped through a red light. “Look, I promised Paolo I’d get you back for work tomorrow. Don’t worry about it, it’ll be okay.”

“What’s _it_?” Alberto hissed as they caromed off a curb to nearly run down an old man, then blinked as the world abruptly went dark. Then he realized he’d thrown his hands over his eyes and…well, he pressed them down harder. After jamming down his seatbelt while he could.

Zlatan snorted. “That old bastard threw something at us! You know, he’s going to be really sorry he wasted a good cannoli like that—oh, were you saying something?”

The problem was Alberto could still hear, and his imagination turned out to be surprisingly good at attaching scenarios to the various screeches, shouts, rattles and bone-rattling thumps going on around him. He tried lifting his arms so his elbows covered his ears, but couldn’t manage to muffle things very well. “What are we doing?”

“Oh, I didn’t—sorry, thought I’d said. Well, so you did something with cookies, right?” And something about Zlatan’s tone made Alberto peek out between his fingers, though he immediately wished he hadn’t. The color of Zlatan’s eyes was still brown, but it was an odd, gold-sheened, dangerous kind of brown. Also, Zlatan’s fangs were poking down over his lower lip again. “By the way, don’t _ever_ do that again.”

“It was an accident! I didn’t know what I was doing!” Alberto blurted out. To be honest, at this point in his life, those two statements were pure reflex, but in this case they were also true. And well, he was starting to feel really bad again, and he’d already sworn to himself he’d just buy cookies from the nearest pastry shop from now on. “I’m sorry!”

“Which is why we’re going to see Figo. He’ll do something about that,” Zlatan said. Which was rather vague and mysterious, and did nothing to settle the churning in Alberto’s stomach, but it didn’t seem like a good idea to ask for an explanation. Especially since just then somebody cut Zlatan off and he broke into a torrent of abuse at them, not all of which was Italian or, if the way the car suddenly heated up was any clue, in a human language.

Alberto jammed his heels into the floor and did his damnedest to wrap his arms completely around his head. He counted to one hundred, then started over, and he was at fifty-two for the second time when the car came to a squealing, fish-tailing, bouncing stop. For a moment Alberto seriously thought he was going to die.

Then all the ruckus stopped. Though he could still hear Zlatan muttering, so maybe they weren’t dead. Then again, Zlatan was a demon so…he couldn’t die, could he? It’d just be going home for him—Alberto stopped there because he knew from several unfortunate family reunions that theology wasn’t his subject. And he took down his arms, but mostly because they were cramping up.

“You just going to sit there?” Zlatan tapped at Alberto’s shoulder, then swung himself out his door before Alberto could even fully turn towards him.

Well, it looked like a regular street, and actually…that place down the way was a gelato place Alberto really liked, right down to the half-lit neon ‘Open’ sign. So he guessed he wasn’t dead, after all.

He got out of the car and Zlatan was already on the sidewalk. Blinking, Alberto stuffed his hands in his pockets and made them jingle. He looked down, pulled out his key-ring, and then he was going to lock the car, only Zlatan grabbed his arm again and dragged him away. At the same time the little levers on the bottom of all the car windows went down.

“Got that, don’t worry about it,” Zlatan said. He looked at Alberto, then let go of Alberto’s arm and shoved Alberto through the door of the store instead. “Oh, yeah, can’t squeeze you people too hard.”

“Um, ow.” Alberto rubbed at his sore arm as he stumbled over the threshold, some bell chiming madly above his head. His foot bumped something soft and he yanked it back, but lost his balance and fell to the side.

Luckily, something was there to keep him upright. He did knock his elbow a bit, but at least he could straighten up against the…bookshelf? And take a proper look about the…bookstore. Oh, of course.

It was a nice, slightly eccentric little place. There was the usual table up front with the newest books, plus some racks of paperbacks, but most of the space was filled with tall, imposing bookshelves of what looked like serious collectors’ items: leatherbound, gilt engraving on the sides. Which would’ve been claustrophobic and scary, except delicate, whimsical glass mobiles were hanging from the ceiling in several places. Their various orbs and spires and other pieces bounced the light from the windows all over the place so it kind of sparkled instead.

And then Alberto looked down to see what he’d almost stepped on, and found himself staring into the very, very white and very, very long teeth of a gigantic black wolf. He froze.

“Gila!” Something zipped up next to the wolf, who blinked and hunched up and generally seemed about as startled as Alberto. It was much smaller, but also black, and Alberto got the impression of fuzz before he suddenly was stumbling back into the—thankfully closed—door, his arms full of what seemed to be a human body. “Hey, he brought you! We missed you, you know. Xavi was even talking about sneaking over, and I asked stupid Zlatan if we could come visit but he just said—”

“Don’t even, furball. Where’s Figo?” Zlatan snorted, ambling around somewhere.

Cesc twisted around and stuck out his tongue in the direction that Alberto presumed Zlatan was. Then he turned back and beamed at Alberto again—and the smile lasted even as Cesc’s body jerked and warped, shrinking and going furry. Alberto blinked, and then he had a grinning fox cradled in his arms.

“Why?” said a voice Alberto didn’t recognize.

Alberto looked around, but didn’t see the voice’s owner. Then he remembered the wolf and hastily glanced down, only to find it whuffing dismissively as it rolled over, rather slowly and awkwardly. Its belly was bulging the way a python’s did after a good meal.

The prudent thing seemed to be retreat while he could, so Alberto scooted into the shelves, trying to keep Cesc’s madly-swishing tail from hitting anything as he did. He found himself facing a dead end, then turned around and thus discovered the cashier’s desk.

The man behind it was…was…well, he had fox ears sticking out of his black hair. Fox ears that were folded over, one a little more than the other, to match the expression of extreme lack of surprise on his face. He was shorter than Alberto, but suddenly Alberto felt gawky and oversized, and also for some reason that his clothes were ridiculously conservative and out-of-fashion.

Cesc stirred in Alberto’s arms, making him start. A strange sense of disorientation passed over him and he shook his head, then looked up again. Zlatan was sauntering into view, favoring the clerk with an equally unimpressed look. “Stop fucking with Gila or I’ll straighten your ears for you. Who the fuck do you think you are? I mean, clearly you know absolutely nothing about how it works around here, or else you wouldn’t ask me such a stupid question.”

“Um, Zlatan, maybe we should just…” Alberto started. He ended in a surprised yelp as Cesc nipped his hand.

Zlatan and the other…fox-demon, Alberto belatedly guessed, ignored him anyway and kept staring at each other. Cesc wriggled again, his tongue flicking over Alberto’s hand. Then he started bumping his head against Alberto’s fingers; after a moment, Alberto got it and began to scratch between Cesc’s ears. Which made Cesc go limp in a hurry, and so Alberto had to scramble to get a better grip and not drop him.

“I’m David Villa. I live here,” the fox-clerk said. “Who the hell are you?”

A distinctly groan-like noise came from Cesc, who when Alberto checked, had his eyes mostly closed like he had a headache and his muzzle jammed into Alberto’s forearm.

“I’m Zlatan, and I’m going to make your—”

“Zlatan!” Thankfully, Figo came up from somewhere just then. He paused, clearly noting the tension, and then rounded the desk to hug Zlatan anyway.

David looked a little miffed, but then he shrugged and…well, dropped out of sight. A moment later, a small black fox trotted out from behind the desk. But it made the bad decision of going right past Zlatan’s left leg, with a contemptuous glance upwards—there was a lot of blurring, and then Zlatan was snarling and shaking a much less blasé-looking David by the scruff of the neck while Figo yanked at his arm and hissed at him. After some teeth-gnashing, Zlatan reluctantly tossed David onto the floor and went into the corner with Figo.

Alberto had jerked forward when David had gone sailing through the air, but even if his arms hadn’t already been full of Cesc, he never would’ve made it in time. So he was relieved when, upon contact with the floor, David just dissolved into a blobby shadow instead of collapsing in a limp huddle. He sighed and settled back, then jumped again as something grazed his leg.

It was David, eeling from shadow back into solid fox-form. He flicked his tail into being, then flopped over on his side, his mouth slightly open as he panted. After a quick look at the other two, Alberto knelt down and gingerly reached towards David. Who yanked up his head to stare at Alberto with narrowed eyes, but Cesc made some yipping noises and David yipped back, and then David let Alberto feel him over. Nothing broken, Alberto was glad to find…and honestly, they might have been demons, but these foxes had the softest fur Alberto had ever encountered. He couldn’t help petting it long after he had a good reason to, but luckily David didn’t seem to be objecting. Actually, he was stretching out so Alberto could get at his belly; Cesc whined then and Alberto muttered an apology as he resumed his ear-rubbing on the other fox. Cesc accepted the apology with a contented snuffle and a wriggle against Alberto’s chest.

“Zlatan, for God’s sake, of course he’s not going to know what’s going on just from that. And if it’s what I think it is, then the worst thing you could do is get him panicky and scared. He might—” Figo’s voice stopped just above Alberto’s head. When he looked up, the other man was staring at him with a funny expression on his face, sort of a cross between relief and exasperation. “Alberto?”

“Um. Sorry.” Alberto pulled his hand back from David, then used it to push himself back to his feet. Then he blinked, looking around himself: a whole pack of little black and brown foxes had materialized from nowhere and were all staring at him and Figo with the same surprisingly human look of disappointment. “Um. I just. They’re soft.”

Figo was silent for a moment, but somewhere in the background Zlatan filled in with plenty of laughter. “Listen, Gila, I’m leaving your car here so you can leave whenever you’re done. I’ve got something else to do but I’ll be around tomorrow if you’ve got questions, or Figo says I need to take you somewhere, or whatever. Okay?”

“Of course they are,” Figo finally said. He raised his hand and touched his fingers to his forehead, then sighed. Then he looked up and his eyes narrowed. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

Alberto looked downwards to find Cesc, whose ears he was apparently still petting, happily rubbing and wiggling himself along Alberto’s arm, a pink tongue lolling out of the center of his lazy grin. Then Figo grabbed Cesc’s scruff and lifted away the fox, and the smile turned into a mad frenzy of indignant barks and snarls, which Figo completely ignored as he waded his way back to the desk. He put Cesc…somewhere, then returned with a box of disposable disinfectant wipes, which he gave to Alberto. “Here.”

“Okay,” Alberto said uncertainly.

Figo studied him for a moment while Alberto shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Then he frowned down at the foxes still surrounding them. “Not now. He doesn’t even know what he is, and I don’t need you confusing him. You like him so much, you’ll play nice.”

There were a few half-hearted grumbles, but in clumps and fits, the foxes melted away into the shadows. Rolling his eyes, Figo muttered something about wishing the shed fur would melt away too as he turned back to the desk. “Follow me.”

Nobody else seemed to be around, so Alberto decided that that was meant for him and cautiously trailed after the other man. Well, he started to, but then Figo pulled up suddenly and looked over his shoulder.

“Alberto, use those wipes. I know Cesc hasn’t had a shower yet today,” Figo said.

“He looked pretty clean…oh. _Oh_.” Things always tended to come together for Alberto like that, much too late to ever save him any embarrassment. It’d seem like he’d get used to that, but no, every single time he still blushed anyway. Which was just stupid, and never mind, he was just ignoring that and stripping off his suit-jacket.

Figo took that, which made Alberto glance up, but the other man just went to hang it on a peg. So Alberto hurriedly rolled up his shirt-sleeve and managed to wipe off his wrist and hand by the time Figo came back. Then he handed over the wipe package, and Figo stopped to put it away on the way to…a staircase in the corner.

“Watch your step on the third one. It’s a little shaky and I haven’t had a chance to fix it yet,” Figo said over his shoulder. He paused again, but he was reaching into his pocket so Alberto figured he was just getting out his keys. “From what Zlatan says, nobody’s really told you anything, right? Zlatan always seems to think everyone’s normally at his speed, but I don’t understand why Paolo or Sandro didn’t…well, never mind. So I’d like to hear your version of what happened, but so far it seems like you did a bit of magic without realizing it.”

“It was just—I was just trying out this herbal treatment my grandmother gave me. Just old wives’ tales. I didn’t think it’d really do anything,” Alberto blurted out.

The keys were out, but Figo didn’t start walking again. Instead he looked at Alberto, closely but somehow not in a way that made Alberto too nervous. “That’s why it’d be magic. If it’d just been the herbs working, that’s just being a decent pharmacist.”

“But…but I’m not a magician! I mean, not a—whatever you call them—”

“Mage. Wizard if you’re cheap…”

“—and I’ve never done anything special in my life, and this was the first time anything’s ever—that can’t be it. It’s got to be something else. I’ve got no special abilities—”

“ _Alberto_.” Now Figo was staring hard at Alberto, to the point that Alberto nearly scooted off back downstairs. But then he leaned back on the rail, blinked a few times, and then looked more calmly at Alberto. “Well, it’s hard to tell right now what did go on. That’s just the likeliest possibility from what I know now, but there are other explanations. So if you’re all right with it, I’d just like to do a few things to narrow down the possibilities.”

After a moment, Alberto…looked down at his feet. He twisted his fingers together a few times, then jammed his hands into his pockets when he realized what he was doing. Then he lifted his head. “Will it…will this make sure I don’t do anything stupid again? Because I really…didn’t want to hurt anybody. And I know Paolo and Sandro said I didn’t, but…”

“It’ll make sure you know what you’re doing,” Figo said, nodding.

“Then okay.” Alberto glanced at the stairs again, then stepped forward.

* * *

Figo pushed back from his computer, then spun about in his chair and got up. His feet thudded across the room to the door, which creaked as he opened it, and a moment later, soft pattering steps crossed the room the other way. At that point Alberto, who’d been having trouble concentrating on the stuff he’d been grinding up with a mortar and pestle for the last half-hour, couldn’t help but look.

That wolf from downstairs dropped into the corner, besides a footstool. It was closely followed by a black fox with slightly wavy fur—Alberto looked again to make sure—which nosed its way up between the wolf’s sprawled legs, then began to curl up so it looked like…the wolf had a very full belly. Oh.

“Raúl, did something happen in Spain that I don’t know about?” Figo asked the fox-and-wolf lump. “I can’t get into the Toledo archives anymore.”

The fox’s head separated from the wolf’s belly. It cocked to the side, and then the fox agilely leaped over the wolf and went into the hall. Figo continued to stand where he was, just staring at the wolf.

“When the _hell_ did you come up?” Figo finally mumbled. “You know, when I told Cesc he could bring up his tribe, I didn’t mean that he could bring a whole damn _nation_ with him.”

“Oh, Mori’s not one of us, actually. He’s with me.” A man about Figo’s height came back out of the hall. He pulled out Figo’s chair, then sat in it and pulled the keyboard towards him. “I’m sorry if Cesc didn’t say how many of us there were, but we’ll pay you back. That’s a real promise, on our honor, and not a shadow one. And Toledo just is doing some maintenance, but I know some of them so hang on, I’ll get you in.”

Which, curiously enough, didn’t involve typing or using the mouse, but did require taking out a candle from Figo’s desk, lighting it, and making the flame turn black. Then Raúl, or so Alberto guessed, set the candle—still burning black—off to the side before slipping off the chair back into fox-form. He scooted across the floor, glancing up at a resigned-looking Figo, and resumed his place on Mori’s belly. Mori yawned, his tongue flopping out, before curling up so his tail more or less hid Raúl from view.

“Thank you. And I really should know by now not to say yes without asking lots of questions, but…how’s that going?” Figo asked, turning towards Alberto. He came over and examined the powder, then took the mortar from Alberto. “That’s probably fine.”

Good, Alberto thought. His arms really hurt, from his wrists all the way into his shoulders, and he was really feeling the effects of working a full day before coming over here. Even as anxious and confused as he was, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. “What do you need in Toledo?”

“Hmm?” Figo had wandered over to a cabinet and was now taking out various bottles and dripping stuff from them into the mortar. “I’m searching genealogies.”

“But I told you…” A yawn got out, despite Alberto’s best efforts. “None of my family’s…even my grandmother, who gave me that herbal…”

A tiny puff of purple smoke rose from the mortar, startling Alberto enough so that the second yawn nestling in his throat never made it out. But Figo didn’t seem so pleased, frowning and tilting the mortar about in his hand. “I know, but magical ability can skip several generations. Anyway, it might not be that you were born with it, but that you were in the same place with someone who was, and there are several different ways that—well, put it this way. Mages fuck up a lot.”

Alberto sat up a little straighter. “What? But you said…”

Still frowning, Figo elbowed shut the cabinet and then came back over. He put down the mortar, then laid a leather packet next to it, which he then proceeded to unroll. “I know, and I’m going to try to make it work out that way. I promise, Alberto. But magic’s like any other ability—if you don’t train it, you can’t make it do too much, and if you go off and do things with it without knowing much, then you’ll usually get into trouble.”

The packet fell out to display a…a very wide, very glittery range of scalpels. They looked familiar, Alberto thought. Then he thought ‘scalpels’ and pulled his arms into his sides, staring worriedly at Figo.

The other man was fussing over the blades, picking at one and then shaking his head and moving on, but he seemed to sense what Alberto was doing. He looked quizzically up, then grimaced and shook his head. “Damn it—look, if you’re confused about something, just ask. I won’t be bothered by it, and actually, sometimes I need it if I’m too focused on something.”

“Okay,” Alberto said. Though he watched Figo poke at scalpels a little longer before he finally worked up to a question. “What…what are we doing now?”

“I just—you remember when we did the spell in the kitchen? It’s like that. I’m just going to take some of your blood, just a drop from your finger, and then this should tell us if you’ve got anything within a certain range of powers.” Figo finally settled on a very thin, needle-like lancet and slid it out of its holding band. He went back to the cabinet to get a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton pads, one of which he used to wipe down the lancet with the alcohol. “It doesn’t cover everything, but it hits most of the common ones.”

Something scuffled on the floor and Alberto looked down to see Cesc slinking along the floor. Then the fox flowed into a shadow on the wall, which slowly grew as it moved around Figo. When it was man-size, it came off into fox-eared Cesc, who quickly attached himself to Figo’s hip, his hands shifting around till they disappeared—but Figo’s shirt-tails were still moving. “Oooo, that test? You know what’d be really cool, Gila? If you were a—”

“Not now,” Figo said. He somehow handed Alberto the lancet and a cotton pad at the same time that he detached Cesc, apparently using nothing but one elbow to do that.

Cesc pouted. “I took a shower.”

“Good for you, but I’m doing a spell and I don’t want to end up blowing a hole in my floor just to scratch an itch,” Figo calmly replied. After some more frowning into the mortar, he moved that so it’d be right under Alberto’s hand. “If you want something to do that badly, go finish hacking for me.”

“That’s too easy,” Cesc sniffed, but he went over and plopped himself before the computer anyway.

Alberto looked warily at the lancet. He put the index finger of his left hand over the mortar, then rotated it, thinking it’d be better to cut the back so he wouldn’t be accidentally poking it as much. Then he hesitated, looking up at Figo. The uncertain clenching in his gut had lessened a little since Figo had sat him down and explained the different possibilities, patiently repeating himself whenever Alberto needed it, but mostly because that had made it feel like it was any other screw-up Alberto had to deal with. But it wasn’t—this was _magic_ , for God’s sake. And maybe most of the time he could pretend that he just had really weird days, where he had Gianluigi flying in to his balcony and Paolo covertly made wilted cut flowers into flourishing potted plants and Zlatan had little red flecks between his teeth, but this wasn’t one of those times.

“Alberto?”

With a motion so convulsive it qualified as a spasm, Alberto looked up. He would’ve cut his finger by accident if Figo hadn’t grabbed his hand.

“Alberto. Listen. I know this is all very strange and new, but when you get down to it, it’s just another way of living. It’s not going to change what you’re like or who you are—it’ll just add to it, no matter what turns out to be the explanation. All right?” Figo waited a few seconds. His face was clear of its usual tinge of exasperation, and he really seemed to genuinely be concerned. “Also, I’ll explain everything. You’re not going to be stumbling around in the dark.”

“I think that would be even weirder, since it’s not what I’m used to,” Alberto said. He’d meant it as a joke, since he was beginning to feel a little embarrassed at how badly he was coping, but instead he sounded sort of high and shaky. So to distract himself, he slashed the back of his finger. Then he stared at the blood welling up and dripping into the mortar. “Um, so how much…”

The other man blinked, then cursed and jerked away the mortar. “One drop! I just said—” Figo glanced at Alberto, then sighed and set the mortar back down, far from both of them. “Never mind. Alberto, your finger is bleeding.”

“Oh! Right.” Blushing, Alberto hastily applied a cotton pad to the cut, wrapping it as tightly as he could around his finger without losing the feeling in that digit.

Then he didn’t really have much to do. He looked at Figo again, but the other man was watching the mortar, so Alberto did too. A thin wisp of smoke was rising from the white ceramic bowl, curling and white, but as they watched, it began to turn different colors. Alberto sniffed, then blew out his nose as his nostrils began to sting. Then he glanced at Figo, and when he found Figo holding a sleeve over his nose, he did the same.

Oddly enough, the smoke stopped rising after it’d gone about half a meter, pooling sideways as if it’d hit an invisible barrier. It flicked through greens and blues and purples before seeming to settle on a rather boring light gray.

“Huh,” Figo muttered. He didn’t look pleased.

A ping made Alberto start, but he looked the wrong way at first and just saw Mori gazing inquisitively at them. Then he looked the right way, towards the computer, and found Cesc draped over Figo’s chair, directing a confused, annoyed expression at the screen.

“It found nothing,” Cesc announced. He paused, then spun around the chair. “Luís, there’s nothing. It’s not in his blood.”

“What does gray mean?” Alberto finally asked.

Figo stirred, like he’d just been woken from a trance. He glanced at Cesc, then went over and checked the computer himself. Then he came back and looked at Alberto till Alberto fidgeted himself into accidentally kicking a table-leg.

“Damn it, I’m sorry.” Alberto looked up, looked down, and pulled the cotton pad from his finger. The cut had scabbed over, so he could probably wait to bandage it up till he got home.

“Gray means you’ve got…it means you’re a normal person. At least as far as that test goes,” Figo said slowly. He stared at Alberto for a little longer, but he was clearly concentrating on something besides Alberto. Then he wheeled about and disappeared into the hall.

Alberto blinked, then looked questioningly at Cesc, who shrugged. “Well, nothing wrong with that as long as you can still scratch our heads. But it would’ve been really cool if you’d had something, ‘cause then you could’ve petted us all at the same time.”

* * *

Several hours and some extremely odd tests later, Figo gave up and sent Alberto home. By then Alberto was just too tired—he couldn’t say whether he was relieved or disappointed to find out it’d been a false alarm. In fact, he couldn’t even trust himself to drive home, and had had to ask Figo after needing five minutes to realize he was trying to jam the wrong end of his car key into the ignition.

He managed to work the elevator in his building okay, though he had problems getting his front door open. When he finally did, Alberto just…he just stumbled through, wanting desperately to collapse right there. But he had work in a few hours, and at the very least he owed it to Paolo and Sandro to be professional about that. So he staggered groggily on, heading for the bathroom. Quick shower, quick sleep, and he’d just nap through lunch instead of eating, he figured.

Alberto got through all of that and then got onto his bed, and was very, very close to going to sleep when something nagged at him. He tried to push it away, but it was so insistent that finally he turned over. And then he nearly screamed. Well, actually, he did scream, but he was so exhausted that his urge to scream and his effort weren’t really matched up, so his throat spasmed but the noise itself got delayed and then withered up so it was more of a gurgle than anything else.

The big, looming shadow moved till Gianluigi’s head popped into the light streaming from the bathroom, where Alberto had forgotten to flip the switch on his way out. “Stop that.”

“I—oh—you—sorry.” After a long breath and a sharp shake, Alberto was in a fit state for speaking again. He also pried his hands off the sheets. “You scared me.”

Gianluigi’s expression never changed much, but sometimes Alberto thought he could tell if some emotion was stirring beneath it. Like right now, he got a feeling of confusion. “Why would I scare you? I’m not a demon or a monster.”

“Um. Well. Maybe it’d be better to say you surprised me. I didn’t see you there,” Alberto said.

“You walked right by me to the bathroom, and then again when you came out,” Gianluigi told him.

Alberto blinked a few times, trying to think through that, but it only made his head start to hurt behind his eyes. He sat up and rubbed at his eyes, hoping that that would massage away the throbbing. “Oh. Sorry. I’m a little sleepy.”

Gianluigi didn’t say anything, but instead just moved around like he was looking for a seat. When he turned, Alberto could see that he had one wing out: the injured one, which even though the stitches had come out, still had a long scar that stood out even in the dark because the feathers weren’t growing back there. Out of habit Alberto squinted at it, noting that the angry red puckers around the scar hadn’t gone down any since the last time Gianluigi had visited.

“Is it bothering you again?” he asked.

The angel turned around and looked at Alberto as if that was a stupid question, then turned back so he could look out the window. He kept walking back and forth in front of it, occasionally trying to bend his arm over his shoulder so he could feel at the scar. “It’s not hanging right—something’s wrong with the muscles. I can’t get them to extend all the way.”

The wing was drooping so its longest feathers were trailing on the floor, and now that Alberto was looking for it, he could see that the feather-tips were ragged and worn. He kicked off the sheets, paused as the world went a little unsteady, and when it’d straightened itself out, he crawled over to the edge of the bed closest to Gianluigi. “Do you…do you want me to look at it again? I…mentioned last time, I don’t really know anything else I can do, short of…trying to find you a doctor…”

“No,” Gianluigi snapped, whirling about. Then he grimaced and grabbed at the top of his wing, which had knocked into a planter hanging from the ceiling. He stared at the plant so long that Alberto almost thought it was withering beneath the glare.

“Um,” Alberto said quickly. Which got the glare transferred to him so he had to duck his head, but he made himself get off the bed anyway. He edged over to where he could peer at Gianluigi’s scar, but had to stop because Gianluigi suddenly turned around. So Alberto ended up having to look at his face—well, technically he could’ve kept looking at Gianluigi’s stomach, but that seemed a little improper. At least, it _felt_ improper. “No to…to which? I’m really sorry I can’t do anything, so I understand if you don’t want me to mess with it some more, but…”

Gianluigi looked at him, all narrowed eyes and silver-limned lashes. Then the angel shifted out of the moonlight, his hand sliding restlessly over the leading edge of his wing. He always seemed really defensive of both of his, but then, that did make sense once Alberto had thought about it. The one wasn’t healing right, and of course he wouldn’t want to risk the other one…sometimes, though, Alberto did wonder if that was just Gianluigi. Unfortunately he didn’t really have any standards of comparison, since the one time he’d asked Sandro about his wings, Sandro had gotten a look on his face like he didn’t even give Zlatan. And then the ceiling tile right over them had cracked wide open.

Sandro had apologized for that later, which was something Alberto still didn’t quite understand, but he had gotten the general gist, he thought. Angels didn’t really like talking about their wings. Except Gianluigi did, but mostly to complain about them.

“I don’t want a doctor. I don’t think you could find a doctor, anyway,” Gianluigi finally said. He spoke slowly and carefully, clearly trying to make sure Alberto could understand him.

“Oh, I know, it’s not like you could walk into an ER. Or a vet’s, or…never mind. I’m sorry, I’m tired and not thinking straight.” So he wouldn’t feel totally humiliated and idiotic, Alberto dodged past the angel and went to straighten the planter, which was still a little askew from running into Gianluigi. “But there are…mages and people like that, aren’t there? Could any of—”

“Mages are people who go too far in what they think they should know. They think they’re small gods, and that’s patently wrong,” Gianluigi said. He was still speaking in measured tones, but his eyebrows had drawn thunderously down.

The planter was adjusted, but Alberto kept fiddling with it anyway. Maybe if he poked it enough, he’d figure out—no, it never worked that way. But, and he was both relieved and embarrassed to admit this, it was good for hiding his face. “Oh. Sorry.”

Actually, some of the leaves were withered. Alberto picked at one and it came immediately away in his hand, which made him sigh. He’d probably been forgetting to water the poor thing again. He moved to drop the dead leaf in the wastebasket, but a movement from Gianluigi made him stop and look over. “Why do you even bring them up?” Gianluigi asked.

“Oh, no good reason. I just…damn it, you can tell when I lie, right? Oh, shit, I just—” Another expletive was nearly out of Alberto’s mouth before he finally resorted to slapping his hand over his mouth. He looked apologetically at Gianluigi, who just stared back, then slid his hand up over his eyes. Then he pulled it back through his hair, grimacing at himself. “Okay, well, this sounds stupid because…it is stupid, but…I was trying to find something to help you, and apparently some magical thing happened, and um, it sort of involved Sandro and Paolo. It was an accident, but I know I should’ve known better…”

“You shouldn’t touch magic. For that matter, you should be careful around those two, and that demon they continue to harbor.” Without offering anything else, or waiting for a reply, Gianluigi went around Alberto to the balcony door. He didn’t seem to do anything, and his hands definitely didn’t leave his sides, but somehow the door got open so he could walk out.

Alberto sucked in a breath, but then killed his comment when he saw that Gianluigi wasn’t going anywhere yet. He sent up a small thanks for that, since he never was sure when he was offending the angel and he really didn’t want to do that. “I, um, I know. That’s what they said. But that’s why I was thinking of mages…for a little bit—”

Gianluigi abruptly spun around and came forward, so quickly that Alberto took a hasty step back. The angel stopped at the doorway, but if he’d let himself launch through it, he probably would’ve gone to the other side of the room without losing any momentum. “Are you one?” he barked. His eyes seemed to drill right through Alberto, and for a moment Alberto thought—but then Gianluigi shook his head, looking disgusted. “I don’t feel anything, and I still hear God. You’re not.”

Well, Alberto didn’t really know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything. It was too bad he didn’t have anything to do either, since he basically ended up just shifting around on his feet, awkwardly staring at Gianluigi. Not that he minded doing that, but he had a strong feeling it looked weird from the other end, and he’d already gotten Gianluigi mad once.

“Good.” After another moment, Gianluigi pulled himself back through the door. He felt at his injured wing again, then rolled his shoulders and—and that was fascinating and beautiful to watch, no matter how many times Alberto saw it. His other wing unfurled from his shoulder, shaking into long white feathers that shimmered in the moonlight, the slight night breeze whispering through them.

“Are you going?” Alberto eventually asked.

For some reason, that made Gianluigi jerk around to look nearly as sharply at Alberto as he had when Alberto had mentioned mages. But he didn’t look half as long this time, and when he turned away, he did so with a faintly puzzled air. “It’s not so bad that I can’t use it, but it bothers me.” His hands slipped into his pockets, then back out. “The muscles are too tight all the time.”

“Oh, your wing.” Alberto always needed a moment, but unlike a lot of people, Gianluigi usually waited for it. He also tended to stare silently so Alberto really felt that moment, but that was something Alberto was pretty used to by now. “Maybe it’s just cramp? Have you tried massaging it?”

Gianluigi glanced at him, frowning. “No,” he said, and then he disappeared.

After a moment, Alberto cautiously stepped onto the balcony and looked around. He found a feather wedged between the rail and the concrete platform, but nothing else, so he went back inside and closed the door. Then he looked at the feather: it was one of the small ones, only about as long as his hand, but it was still quite stiff. When he ran his thumbnail down it, he found he could make a buzzing noise like a bumblebee.

A yawn suddenly caught hold of Alberto, and by the time he’d worked through it, he found his eyesight wavering again. He looked at the balcony, but Gianluigi was definitely gone and all he could do was try not to be so idiotic next time. So Alberto put the feather on a shelf and then went back to bed.

* * *

The next day Paolo didn’t come down till past noon. Sandro was on hand to open up, as usual, but he was strangely mellow. A waiter showed up late without prior notice and instead of acidly revealing the falsities in the man’s excuses, Sandro just told him it’d be docked from his pay.

Thankfully for Alberto, who was suffering from his lack of sleep even after skipping lunch for a nap, it was an easy day. Medium-size crowd, no troublemakers or unexpected surprises, and Sandro didn’t corner him to ask him about Figo till the day was nearly over.

“Nothing?” Sandro said, frowning.

Alberto shrugged, then tried to cover a yawn with a stack of menus. “That’s what Figo said. No—he said there was one last thing he’d try, but that I didn’t need to be there for that. So he’s going to call, um, Zlatan, I think, when he’s done.”

Sandro’s face crinkled slightly, but then he snorted and muttered something about lazy demons and needing to fix scorch-marks anyway. He walked off before Alberto could even try to puzzle out that one, and right after that, the restaurant phone rang and ended up being the health agency, informing Alberto of some new regulation about which he’d have to “negotiate” with them.

By the time he’d tracked down Paolo—sipping hot cocoa and adding up invoices while lying on his stomach on the office sofa, for some reason—talked that over with him, gotten back to the health agency and then resumed his position at the front, he’d forgotten all about it. And he was too desperately trying to get to the end of his shift to remember it. When Alice showed up for the dinner shift, he nearly fell into her arms out of sheer gratitude, and only didn’t because…well, because he’d been trying to work up the guts to maybe do something along that line for months now and his habitual nerves held him back.

“You look horrible, Gila. I hope whatever you were up to last night was worth it,” Alice said, smiling.

She playfully ruffled his hair when he tried to pass her the reservation book, then hastily withdrew her hand, her smile dying. Alberto glanced down at the book, but he didn’t think he’d accidentally hit her with it and anyway, she wasn’t holding that arm. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then absently patted down his hair. “Sorry, did I catch you?”

“Did you…” Now she was staring at the top of his head with a frowning, curious look. She lifted her hand again, then moved her arm so she was nearly circling his head with it, leaning so close that Alberto could tell she’d just taken a shower from the dampness at her hairline. After a few feints, her fingers finally dropped into his hair and tugged at it, then came away with something small and white. “A flower?”

“What?” Alberto realized his eyes were staying on her neck a little too long and jerked up his head, hoping he wasn’t flushing too much.

But Alice was looking at the tiny, delicate blossom she’d pulled from his hair, a delighted smile curving her lips. She put it to her nose and sniffed, then let out a trilling laugh. “A snowdrop? I’d think that they’re still a good month away.”

“Oh, that’s odd. I was in the basement when the florist came and Sandro checked that delivery today,” Alberto said. He took a closer look at the flower and something rustled in his sleeve, tickling along the underside of his wrist. More than a little startled, Alberto shook it out, then stooped to pick up another snowdrop from the floor.

“We didn’t even order snowdrops, Gila. That’s not the color scheme this month,” Alice said, shaking her head. But she still seemed rather taken by the flowers, even going so far as to pluck the second flower from Alberto’s fingers. “Where are these coming from? What _were_ you doing last night?”

Well, then Alberto remembered. He flinched and Alice looked oddly at him, whereupon he clutched at the reservation book and vigorously shook his head. “Oh, nothing. No, really, it was a boring night…I just couldn’t sleep for some reason. I stayed up and watched a lot of bad infomercials, um, trying to bore myself to sleep, but it didn’t work.”

She gazed at him, her head slightly tilted, but then the phone rang and they both reached for it. And both paused. Then Alice sighed and gently pushed Alberto’s hand off to take the call. “I can tell that just from the bags under your eyes. Go home and sleep, all right? You do look—Gila, was that another one?”

“Huh?” Then Alberto spotted the little flower lying on the phone’s keypad. He picked it up, his gut starting to sink as a not-so-crazy-now thought occurred to him.

Alice giggled. “Are you sure it was infomercials taking up your time? It’s like a magic trick, all these flowers.”

Alberto flinched again, then muttered out some farewell and exited as quickly as bare decency allowed. But then on the sidewalk he had a thought about the cookies and he had to rush back inside. Luckily Alice was already busy with some customers, so Alberto could scoop up the flowers he’d left behind—and the ones that kept dropping out of his sleeves. It took him till he was back outside to think of stuffing his hands in his pockets, and for once he didn’t think the delay was just down to cleverness not being one of his outstanding traits.

He scuttled across the parking and more or less dove into his car, then slammed shut the door; clumps of flowers flew over the driver’s seat, then squished unpleasantly as he sat on them. It briefly occurred to Alberto that he should check the ground outside for any, but then he finally noticed it was snowing lightly, so hopefully that would make the flowers wilt and…and not do anything. Except Alice had already sniffed one.

Groaning, Alberto began to cover his face with his hands, but then…he stared at the snowdrops raining from his sleeves. Angrily shook them, and almost in the same second realized how stupid that was. Not that that saved his dashboard from getting a hail of the blossoms, and God, was it possible for him to drive home just using his elbows? And wait, _Alice_.

After some frantic fumbling—and more flowers, till his feet were practically swimming in them and he was starting to get dizzy from the smell—Alberto managed to get his phone out so he could stare at it. He had to call somebody, but he had no idea who: Alice wasn’t going to believe him, Sandro and Paolo might finally fire him over this, and…and…well, he didn’t have Figo’s number, aside from the fact that seeing Figo would piss off Gianluigi.

Alberto finally called one of the waitstaff, a friendly fashion-design student who’d once said he reminded him of his baby brother, and asked him if Alice looked okay, using the excuse that he thought he’d heard her sniffling with a cold. When he was told that no, Alice was fine, and in fact had just taken another waiter aside to quietly rip him one for rudeness, Alberto slumped in relief till his knees banged into the steering wheel—and then sneezed due to some flowers flying up and tickling his nose. Whereupon the waiter suggested that maybe he’d heard himself sniffling and to go home and rest.

That, Alberto completely agreed with, and so he hung up, then bunched his sleeves over his hands in an effort to keep the flowers down so he could drive home. It was a short trip, but the traffic was its usual mess and for one of the few times of his life, Alberto found himself swearing under his breath at it.

Then he was home, and well, he didn’t know if he could get out. For a couple minutes, he just stared at the thick green-flecked white blanket of flowers over him and the whole inside of the car. He wanted to swear again, oddly enough. And at Figo, even though that made no sense at all…except maybe that Figo had said…but he hadn’t even said that. He’d just said he hadn’t figured it out yet, not that Alberto was completely normal. Which clearly wasn’t the case.

Well, Alberto couldn’t sit out here forever. If somebody he knew didn’t see him, then at the very least the gas would run out, and pretty soon since he’d meant to fill up on his way home, but…the flowers had gotten in the damn way. “Damn it,” Alberto muttered.

He said it again, then threw up his arms and shook them wildly around. Not for any good reason, or because he even thought it’d do anything except bury him in more snowdrops, but he suddenly had to do _something_. So he did that, and—and surprisingly enough, not too many flowers ended up flying around. Alberto lowered his arms, staring at his hands, and then gave his right arm a tentative shake. A couple blossoms came out, but it was nowhere near like the flood in the restaurant parking lot. A tiny spark of hope appeared inside of Alberto.

About fifteen minutes later, when Alberto was dead certain that the weirdness was over, he carefully rolled down his window. After making sure no one else was around—good thing he had paid extra for the covered parking—he levered himself out through that, trying to brush himself off as he went so all the flowers stayed in the car. The wind whipped up beneath his coat and sent a bit of snow flying into the car, but he was going to come out with the vacuum in a minute anyway to get rid of the snowdrops so he just suffered it. On the other hand, Alberto couldn’t get his window all the way up from the outside, so…

He stood there and stamped his feet a few times, then gave up and just ran for it. Up to his apartment, to his closet, and then back downstairs and out into the lot. Nobody had stolen his car, which was one break he’d been cut today. But it still was utterly freezing out.

It took seven emptyings of his little hand-vacuum to clean up all the flowers, and by then his hands were so cold they hadn’t lost their numbness when he finally dragged himself into his apartment. He stopped by the couch to unpry his fingers from the vacuum, letting it drop on the coffee-table, and then turned to the kitchen. His stomach was a little hungry.

Then Alberto looked at the couch. He didn’t really think about it, other than vaguely noticing that falling face-first onto the cushions hurt his nose, before he fell asleep.

* * *

Alberto didn’t feel better the next morning, since he woke up absolutely starving, full of cramps and feeling grungy from sleeping in his clothes. He stumbled around fixing those and subjected his shins and arms to a further battering in the process. By the time he got down to his car, he was aching and groggy, with a tightness in the back of his head that he suspected meant the two cups of coffee he’d downed were only going to give him a lousy headache.

It all meant he completely failed to remember why he’d set himself up for such a crappy morning till he was actually pulling in to the restaurant. And then he noticed a withered little thing stuck in a vent, and everything from the other day hit him like a shovel to the face.

At any rate, he slapped his hand over his eyes. Then he dragged it around, rubbing hard at his forehead and cheeks and trying to make himself _think_. And he was still doing that when somebody rapped on his window. “Ahh!”

Zlatan blinked, then made a face. “For fuck’s sake, I know my teeth are all blunt.”

“Um, no, it wasn’t you, it was just—I was—sorry.” Alberto stared through the window at Zlatan, then reflexively reached for his keys, which were still in the ignition. He happened to glance at the snowdrop again and then he watched his hand convulsively snatch that up before he yanked out his keys and opened the door. “You just scared me.”

After a long, hard stare, Zlatan suddenly broke into a broad, bright smile. “Good.” He moved back to let Alberto get out of the car, putting his hands in his trouser-pockets; he wasn’t wearing a coat and seemed to be fine about that, even though it was bitterly cold again. “Listen, so I heard back from Figo and he says he couldn’t find anything about you, so it looks like you’re nothing special.”

They looked at each other. Something squished between Alberto’s fingers, and then he realized that that was the flower and hastily stopped himself.

“Well, don’t get all excited or anything,” Zlatan dryly said. “Even though it means you’re off the hook for fucking around with Paolo and I’m going to be nice to you. Without Paolo saying so.”

“Thanks, I think.” Alberto glanced down, then noted that his car door was still open and gratefully seized on closing and locking it. He had a hard time talking to Zlatan in normal circumstances, and today it didn’t help that his neck absolutely killed him every time he tried to look above Zlatan’s chest. “Um, but then what happened? I thought it was pretty clear it was my cookies that did it.”

Zlatan hummed to himself, and when Alberto looked up, he found the demon staring off to the side, a thoughtful expression furrowing his brow. “No clue yet, but there are other things that could’ve happened. You did put stuff in there that’s not normally in cookies, and Sandro messes with the spells on the second floor like they’re fashionable hairstyles…why, you _want_ credit for it, after all?”

“No! No, no…if it wasn’t me, that’s great,” Alberto quickly said. Then he looked down again, narrowly avoiding whatever glance Zlatan shot at him. He rubbed at the back of his neck and hoped he didn’t look suspicious or anything. “Can I do anything? With figuring out what it was after all, that is.”

“Nah,” Zlatan said, and walked off.

Alberto watched him go into the restaurant, then took out the squashed blossom and stared at it. It hadn’t been in his imagination—Alice had seen it, and he still had this one. But the whole thing had ended once…he’d gotten home.

That awful sinking feeling in his gut came back as Alberto stared at the restaurant door, which Zlatan had left ajar so Alberto could see the bustle and light inside. He loved his job; it wasn’t just that it paid well and was so nice when he’d flunked out of two professional schools, but that he really, truly woke up every morning glad he had it.

“But the cookies were upstairs,” he said to himself. He didn’t _actually_ have any knowledge, much less expertise, in magic, so he had no authority for drawing conclusions. Maybe.

“Alberto!” Somebody had spotted him and was waving from the door. “What are you standing there for? It’s freezing out! And Adriana made up a batch of madeleines for the staff!”

Alberto blinked, then found he’d automatically taken a step. He looked at his foot. Then he took another step, and another one, and then he just walked inside, bracing himself for the worst. At least this way he’d know, he told himself.

* * *

Nothing happened. Everything went normally that day, and then for the next two days. If Alberto hadn’t hung onto that dried little flower, storing it next to Gianluigi’s feather, he never would’ve known anything odd had ever happened. He even handed off a shift to Alice again and no flowers had popped up anywhere.

Well. That wasn’t quite correct, Alberto thought as he stared into his cup of coffee. The waiter he’d asked to make sure Alice was all right that day had actually ended up asking her out on a date, and if the early signs were anything to go by, they were going to be a very cute, happy couple.

Alberto sighed, then rolled his eyes at himself and pushed himself off the couch-back. It was his fault for waiting so long, he reminded himself. Even though that didn’t really make him feel much better, and from the look of the front page, reading the newspaper wasn’t either. Though he went through the motions of spreading it over his knees and then grabbing his dinner plate from the coffee-table anyway.

He was just lifting a spoonful to his mouth when he heard something rattle in the bedroom. Strangely enough, he didn’t immediately lunge for his cell-phone and the golf club the previous tenant had left in the coat-closet, but just sat there.

That made sense when Gianluigi walked in; Alberto panicked when Gianluigi actually startled him, but never from the angel just showing up. He figured it was just some angel trait, since it was the same with Paolo. Not with Sandro, usually, but then, Sandro generally didn’t let people not notice his entrance, so maybe Alberto just hadn’t had a chance to really see.

“Oh, hi,” Alberto said, trying to get up. He made it halfway before trying to deal with the newspaper and an almost-full plate got too much. Then his spoon started to slip and Alberto cursed without thinking.

He managed to grab it before it hit the floor, and miraculously without spilling any food, but he had to sit back down to do it. A quick glance at Gianluigi revealed the normal emotionless expression accentuated with an air of disgust, but Gianluigi was still standing there. So Alberto decided that being embarrassed over his rudeness would be better than making a mess on the floor, and stayed sitting.

“Are you still doing things with…” Gianluigi’s lip curled “…mages?”

“No. No, actually, I wasn’t really…doing anything in the…first place.” Alberto nervously tugged the newspaper over his knees, then poked his spoon around his plate. “Anyway, it looks like it wasn’t me. That made the accident with Sandro and Paolo happen. Though either way, I’m not going anywhere near magic again. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Good.” Gianluigi seemed about to add something else, but he abruptly turned away instead and walked behind the couch. It didn’t make sense till suddenly his wings came out, and then Alberto saw that the small hallway would never have accommodated those, so maybe Gianluigi was just having a cramp again. He was bending his scarred wing around and rubbing at it, actually.

After a moment, Alberto put aside his plate and newspaper, then twisted around. He blinked, finding Gianluigi’s wing a lot closer than he’d expected. Then he shook his head and looked at the scar while dredging his brain for half-remembered veterinary lessons. “Is it any better?”

Narrowed eyes stared down at him over a white feathery curve. Then Gianluigi swept back the wing and stood there, one arm across his chest to hold onto the opposite shoulder. He flexed that and there was a rasping sound as the feather-tips dragged over the floor, then grimaced slightly. “No. I don’t understand. I should have healed by myself. For that matter, I should have healed perfectly, regardless of anything you did.”

“Oh. Oh, I wish I’d known that. I would’ve been a lot less nervous if I’d known I couldn’t really…um, never mind.” Since it didn’t look like Gianluigi was nearly as pleased as Alberto about that bit of information. Alberto absently kneaded the top of the couch, trying desperately to think of something useful to give in return. “Are there, um, any other angels you could ask? You know, for advice?”

Gianluigi stared at him, long and unblinking so Alberto could nervously think about how unusually light the angel’s eyes really were, especially with black hair and…did angels get tanned? It probably was just how they were made. “This doesn’t _happen_ to angels,” Gianluigi finally said.

“What about Paolo?” Alberto asked. “I think he’s got scars. I um, accidentally opened a door once and interrupted him and—”

Those light eyes flashed, and Gianluigi actually jerked forward as well. Then he stopped, but he didn’t look any happier as he glowered down at Alberto, who’d nearly dropped to hide in the couch cushions. “I am not asking Paolo. His scars he got because he let that _demon_ give them to him.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Alberto badly wanted to bang his head against the couch-top, because of _course_ that was going to be a touchy subject with Gianluigi. Even he could’ve guessed that. “I’m sorry I brought it up. Really stupid of me…but I wish it wasn’t still bothering you. Your wing. I wish I could do more to help with it.”

Gianluigi was silent for a few seconds. He kept rubbing his shoulder, his brows drawing down a little. Then he took a sudden but liquid step forward, like water spilling, so he was just about looming over Alberto. He stayed like that for a moment before—reluctantly, it seemed—turning so the scarred side of his wing was towards Alberto again. “What did you do to it?” he asked, looking over the top. “I never had stitches before.”

“I just…tried to put it together. I’m sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have even tried—you just were bleeding so much, I thought maybe…but then, you’re an angel.” Alberto was babbling. He was looking at the scar, which was really horrible and all the implications of that were making his stomach twist around on itself, and trying to uphold the conversation. That was the least he could do, he figured. “You can’t really bleed to death. Can you?”

The angel pursed his lips. “I don’t know.”

“Oh.” The skin over the scar was even a different color from the skin around it, Alberto could see now. Whiter, and also drier-looking, almost like somebody had set a piece of ridged cartilage into the spot. “Um. Sorry, but I don’t understand…angels can’t die that way? Or you…were never that badly hurt?”

Gianluigi moved his wing back a bit, then let it come forward again. His fingers were idly running up and down its leading edge as they helped curve it around. “I…was not that badly hurt before.” His lips thinned out and he frowned so fiercely that Alberto was surprised nothing caught on fire; the frown was directed at the floor, thankfully. “But angels don’t die. They fall. Then they can be killed, I suppose. I don’t generally pay any attention to those beyond hope.”

Alberto glanced up at him, then hesitantly sat up so he could get a closer look. It at least seemed like the skin had knit together, but he thought he could make out a couple wrongnesses in the way the muscles were lying beneath that. Which would fit with what Gianluigi had said before about it hurting and cramping easily, but those disjoints could just be thick scar tissue distorting things. “Is that what you think might happen if it doesn’t heal?”

The wing suddenly snapped away, startling Alberto, and when he had finished catching himself on the top of the couch, Gianluigi had stalked halfway to the hall-door, his back and shoulders stiff with anger—and that was clear to see because he’d made his wings disappear.

“I wouldn’t _fall_ so easily,” he snapped. “Don’t think so highly of yourself. Pride was the first sin ever committed, you should remember.”

“What? But…no, I didn’t mean it that way!” In his hurry Alberto jumped right over the couch.

And then completely botched the landing, but he scrambled after the angel anyway, trying to yell some explanation. Unfortunately Gianluigi was too fast: by the time Alberto had made it to the doorway, the angel was already stepping onto the balcony. Alberto sucked in his breath for a last, desperate shout…and Gianluigi launched himself off the railing, his wings swooping outwards in huge, graceful, ghostly-white curves. It didn’t even take a second for him to turn into a speck in the sky after that.

“Damn it,” Alberto said to the empty room. He reached up and rubbed at his forehead, then bent down to check his ankle. “Damn it.”

Then he sighed and went over to close the balcony door. He stood there, looking at the cloudy night sky, before turning away. His gaze drifted over his desk, then snapped back to that as he spotted something.

He’d moved Gianluigi’s feather and the dried-up snowdrop to a spare manila folder, which he’d just left on top of the bills, receipts, and other papers he really needed to sort out but never got around to. But now the folder was slightly pushed up, and when Alberto opened it, he found that the flower had somehow become fresh again, its petals firm and fragrant.

He looked at that for a while, but eventually he just left it in the folder and went to bed. Now he was really confused, but it wasn’t like he could do anything about that, so he figured he might as well make sure he was fine for work.

* * *

“I’m sorry, but I’m using the shower!” Alberto shouted at the door. His voice cracked and he winced, then huddled further into the corner. “Please go away!”

One of what sounded now like a small crowd cursed him out, but then Sandro interrupted and ordered them to go back to work. Which made Alberto collapse against the wall with relief, his panting breaths echoing loudly in the small space. He closed his eyes, then, very slowly, opened them. And looked at the snail crawling around his palm.

“Gila?”

Well, Alberto slid a little further down the wall, but this time it wasn’t from relief. “Sandro, I’m really sorry, but I can’t come out right now. I’ll work overtime tomorrow to make up for it.”

He’d just been checking over a plate before it was supposed to go out, and had noticed the baked-snail garnish had a badly-chipped shell, so he’d picked it out to swap it for a nice-looking one—and it’d slimed over his thumb. And then it’d come alive. It still was alive.

There was some muttering and feet-shuffling outside. Then Sandro cleared his throat, but before he could say anything, Zlatan’s voice came booming down the hall. “Is that pompous shit finally here to say thank-you?”

“What?” Sandro said after a moment. He packed entire universes of uncomprehending derision into that one word. “Never mind, go away. I’m too busy for your nonsense right now.”

The snail crawled over Alberto’s thumb, then began to slime its way across the back of his hand. He felt it starting to slip as the incline grew too great and automatically turned his hand so the snail wouldn’t fall off. Then he stared at it some more. Which wasn’t helpful, but at least he wasn’t screaming, he thought. Hysterical wasn’t quite so bad when it was quiet.

“Zlatan!” Something hit the door. Then again, so hard that the hinges rattled, but rising over that racket was Sandro’s past-aggravated voice. “What are you _doing_? This is a public—”

“Well, it’s not you…actually, I don’t feel it anymore. What the fuck? Are you sure you aren’t hiding Gigi in there?” Long pause, during which Alberto just knew Sandro was giving Zlatan one of those Looks. “What? You didn’t think I was trying to feel you up, did you? You’re not that good-looking at the end of the day.”

Sandro’s breathing got loud enough for—well, Alberto could hear it now, harshly forced into regular intervals. “Why. Would Gigi. Be in the staff shower.”

“Why would I know? You’re the ex-angel, you tell me. I’ve got no idea what goes on in your little chicken brains.” Pointed sniffing sounds. “Hey. Is that…did you put hair-gel on? Not that it looks like it made any difference.”

“I _like_ chicken, you—” scuffling noises “—and now Paolo won’t even try it in sausage, you—” scuffling with some cursing mixed in “— _your_ hair looks like it was styled in a damn _mudpit_ —”

Alberto stared nervously at the fiercely shaking door. He pulled up his knees a little further, then started and grabbed for the snail, catching it just before it plopped off his fingers to the floor. And at the same moment, the door burst open.

Yelping, Alberto yanked his cupped hands back to his chest and jerked himself up the wall, trying to get as far from the tangle of limbs that stumbled into the tiny shower. He banged up his elbows several times before it finally got through to his brain that he couldn’t slam himself through the wall, and then he just sort of collapsed again. Meanwhile, the limb-tangle swung around, stopped, and then fell the other way so Sandro’s head popped out just in time to hit the wall.

Which looked pretty painful, and Sandro was grimacing. Or what Alberto could see of Sandro’s face was grimacing, anyway; Sandro’s eyes were closed and everything below the top of his nose was blocked off by Zlatan’s head, which in turn was mostly blanketed in Sandro’s hands, their fingers knotted so tightly in Zlatan’s hair that their knuckles were whitened. That would’ve been painful too, Alberto would’ve thought.

Except…well…Sandro was…sort of pulling his feet up the backs of Zlatan’s legs, and Zlatan was moving his head in a way that didn’t make sense unless he was either kissing Sandro or biting off his face. And then Sandro shifted a hand down to yank hard at a fistful of Zlatan’s collar, and that got rid of one of the two.

Alberto looked at the snail again, then at the ferocious make-out session in front of him. Then he looked at the snail—he was absolutely sure that it’d been the only one he’d touched, and…and anyway, he hadn’t touched anything that Zlatan or Sandro could’ve eaten this time.

“Mmmph! Allmmgh!”

At that Alberto jerked up his head. He just glimpsed Sandro’s eyes fixed on him before he was up and scooting out the door, very well-developed reflexes taking over. “Sorry, I’m done now, you can…can use it…”

“Gila—”

“Mmmm. You had that chocolate torte-thing, didn’t you? Smells like it,” Zlatan mumbled, shoving his face under Sandro’s chin.

Sandro sagged, eyes glazing over. Then he shook both of them and smacked at Zlatan’s head. “Damn you, just look at our damn menu—”

“Aw, angel cursing. That’s so cute…ow! You fucking bastard! That is _not_ good biting.”

Alberto hooked the door with his foot and pulled it as much as he could, but in his hurry he couldn’t get it entirely shut. And then he saw somebody at the end of the hall and panicked again, remembering the _snail_ \--and by the time he’d calmed down, he had his coat and was in his car. Thank God he’d already handed over his shift and had just been staying a little after to help out with a sudden snarl in service.

He breathed a couple times, blindly watching the glass of his windshield frost over. Then he blinked, shook himself, and turned on his engine to get the heat. He started to reach for the gearshift as well, but realized he couldn’t feel the snail anymore. So he pulled it out of his pocket and looked anxiously at the shell: the snail had pulled itself back in, almost looking as if it were cooked again. But it resisted when Alberto poked the hard cover over the open end of the shell, so…it was still alive.

“Great,” Alberto told it.

It sat there. Well, it rocked a little, but then he realized that was just from the car’s vibrations. It…it was a nice shell, actually. Dark brown, with this little white thread spiraling up around it, and…oh, God, he was in trouble. He was really, seriously in trouble.

After a long think, Alberto put the car in gear and drove home.

* * *

People, much to Alberto’s surprise, apparently took snail-keeping really seriously. When he finally got off the computer and got to rummaging around his kitchen, he felt rather inadequate at the large mason jar with which he ended up. But after an initial trial when Alberto had put it down on his desk, the snail had retreated back into its shell and hadn’t done anything in a while, so he thought it was best to make do with what he had. He got together the minimum the websites said, borrowing some soil from a potted plant and dribbling water over it, and then popped in the snail. Then he went back into the kitchen to find something to punch holes in the lid, and when he’d done that and come back, he found the snail crawling around the jar. Which meant he’d done that all right, he supposed.

Alberto put the jar on his desk, then took out Gigi’s feather and that snowdrop from one of the drawers. He looked at the withered—again—blossom for several seconds before he figured out why it was puzzling him, and then he let out a huge sigh of relief: in leaving the restaurant and coming home, he’d been careful not to touch anything living or that’d once been alive, but he’d forgotten about it once he’d turned on his computer. But no harm done, since it looked like the weirdness had worn off again.

He set the snowdrop and the feather down beside the jar, then pulled up his chair and took a seat. After a few seconds, he began to realize just how tired he was and he folded his arms over the desk, then laid his head on top of them. The snail had made its way over to the wrinkled bits of lettuce Alberto had dropped into the jar and from where he was now, he could actually hear it munching on it.

“I need to tell somebody about this,” he said to it.

The snail moved on to another leaf, leaving behind a deeply scalloped edge. It was kind of pretty, actually.

“I don’t want to be a bad person. I don’t think Figo is either, at least from what I’ve seen, but…well, anyway, I don’t know if he’d mind me just walking in. I’d give him a call first, but I don’t have his number.” Alberto rubbed at his nose, then moved his hand beneath his chin. “And I don’t know…would it just be wasting his time? These things don’t ever seem to last too long, and the first time he couldn’t even find anything…”

For some reason the snail seemed to really like the second leaf, since it ate everything except a sliver of the main stem. Then it apparently was full, since it glided away from the lettuce towards the crumpled wad of wet paper towel Alberto had added to keep up the humidity.

“Still, I guess it’s not a good thing if this keeps happening. I should at least let people know at work,” Alberto said. Then he sighed. He closed his eyes. “But I really _like_ my job.”

A little clinking noise made Alberto’s eyes snap open. He looked around, then sat up and did that again, but saw nothing. Then he heard it again and looked down, realizing it was just the snail’s shell tapping against the glass. He smiled a little, but then put up his elbows and pressed his face into his hands.

“Okay, I’ll tell Paolo the next time I see him.” Alberto pushed especially hard at his cheeks, then dragged off his fingers. “I think he’ll let me explain a little first before he does anything, at least.”

* * *

And Alberto really meant it too, but he went through his next work-day without seeing Paolo. For that matter, Sandro wasn’t around either, though Andrea said he’d been in for some of the morning prep. Alberto was still too nervous about accidentally touching the lobsters or the vegetables to think much on that, and besides, Paolo and Sandro did sometimes go off to do other things. Not usually at the same time, but…

The next day it was like that too, and then the day after that, Sandro was finally around, but he seemed oddly distracted when he wasn’t snappish—even for him. He told off a vendor for making a late delivery, then turned right around and chopped apart some pork ribs so hard that his knife got stuck in the cutting board. So Alberto figured it wasn’t a good time to ask him where Paolo was.

“Hey, Gila.” Zlatan briefly looked annoyed at Alberto’s jump-and-eep, but then slouched his shoulder against the wall. He absently ran a hand over his head. “Haven’t I been around enough for you to get used to me?”

“Um, it’s not you. Everybody does that to me. Except Paolo,” Alberto said. He blinked, then realized he was letting a good opportunity slip by. “Where’s he been, by the way?”

That…was not the smoothest way to put it, and Zlatan’s arched-brow look silently pointed that out. “Don’t you work for him?”

Well, that was true. Which left Alberto without anything to say, really. He stood there for a couple seconds, really feeling his stupidity, and then he started to move around Zlatan. “Sorry, but I need to…”

“Most people would’ve pointed out that I sleep with him,” Zlatan suddenly said, cocking his head. He turned so he was blocking Alberto’s way, then grinned and slid by in the other direction. “Oh, something annoying just came up, and for some reason Paolo and Sandro give a damn. It’s almost over now—actually, I don’t know why Paolo isn’t back yet. He said he’d be in his office by lunch.”

“Oh. Okay.” Alberto stopped, then sort of made a sound. He was still iffy on whether he was actually going to say something, so he was surprised when Zlatan turned around again to look at him. “Um, what came up? Is—was it…one of those…should I really make sure I don’t come in after closing?”

Zlatan was still grinning for some reason. “Well, it depends. You did all right after the screaming last time.”

“But I’d rather not…scream again, and I usually…do,” Alberto said hesitantly. He fiddled with his cuffs. “So it is?”

“Yeah. Right down to Gigi being an arrogant shit—and I _still_ didn’t get a thank-you,” Zlatan snorted. He rolled his eyes as he twisted on his heel. “Honestly, next time I’m just not bothering, no matter how upset Paolo looks. He’s got Sandro, and that was enough of a hassle. I don’t see why I need to help out every idiot with wings in the whole city.”

Alberto blinked. “Gigi? Wait, what do you—”

But Zlatan had already rounded the corner, and somebody was also calling Alberto’s name. After a moment, he went to go see what that was about, but he was still worried about what Zlatan might’ve meant.

So much so, actually, that when Paolo stopped Alberto later to apologize for his absence and to ask after how things had gone, Alberto completely forgot what he’d meant to ask him. Then he tripped over Adriana’s foot and handed Alice hot pepper sauce when she asked for the pepper grinder, and the end result of that was that they made him go home, thinking he was tired out again. He’d actually had a nice night’s sleep, but neither woman listened to him—then again, he was getting his scarf wrapped around his face, so maybe they just couldn’t make him out.

Alberto remembered once he got home, like usual. But he didn’t want to talk to Paolo over the phone about the weird incidents, and especially not when he was nervous about something else on top of that…so he made dinner. Fed the snail, which he really should name, he thought, and firmly told himself that he’d see Paolo in the morning, first thing. Zlatan had said it was all over, at least, so the delay was probably okay. Well, Alberto really hoped so.

* * *

Vaguely disturbing remnants of whatever dream Alberto had been having were still clinging to his mind and eyes when he rolled over, which was why he figured he didn’t yelp or jump or do anything except blink at the huge shadow standing by his bed. He frowned and pushed himself up onto one arm, then rubbed at his eyes. Then he blinked again, the world sharpening very rapidly.

Gianluigi had that one wing out again, spread so it nearly reached the far wall but lowered so Alberto could see the bare patch on the back. He seemed a little irritated. “It stopped working when I was in the air and I nearly fell on some demon.”

“Huh?” Alberto sat up, shivering as the blanket fell off and the cold night air got at him. He shook his head, hard. “What? Your—”

“It—cramped. And I can’t get it to uncramp,” Gianluigi said. The wing jerked, rasping its feathers against the floor. “I can’t _fix_ it.”

“Oh. Oh, God, are you okay?” Then Alberto winced. “Da—sorry. It just popped out.”

The wing lowered again, though the tension in it was obvious. Then Gianluigi rolled his shoulder. “You mean from falling? No, I killed the demon.”

“I…guess it wasn’t Zlatan, then,” Alberto weakly offered. He flushed and looked at his hands, then tried to crane around to get a better view of the wing as Gianluigi stared hard at him. “He, um, was at work earlier and he said something about…you were in a fight?”

“He was there. Annoying and evil, but he did kill his share,” Gianluigi said. His voice was a monotone, but because conflicting emotions were canceling each other out, it sounded like. “But I still don’t understand why Paolo is so-- _fond_ of him. Eventually he’s going to get bored of that sin and move on.”

“I don’t think he’s there just because…um, never mind.” Alberto didn’t even need to see Gianluigi’s expression to know he needed to shut up about that. Though really, he sort of thought Gianluigi was wrong about Zlatan. It was weird to think that, since obviously Gianluigi was a lot older and knew more and was an angel and all, but…well, he wasn’t around a lot. Maybe he’d never seen the way Zlatan stared after Paolo, when Paolo was standing in sunlight.

Anyway, he was probably pretty distracted by whatever was wrong with his wing, and that was really starting to bug at Alberto, too. In fact, that probably was what his nightmare had been all about—he’d had a couple involving Gianluigi’s wing in the past few days. And in his spare time, he’d even gotten out his old veterinary textbooks to see if he could come up with anything, but…well, no.

“It keeps hurting.” Gianluigi spoke much more softly, and when Alberto sneaked a glance at him, the angel was twisted around so Alberto could only see a cheekbone and the glimmer of one eye. “I don’t like it.”

“I wouldn’t either.” And yet another stupid line for Alberto’s huge collection, he thought as he winced. He scooted to the edge of the bed, but the improved perspective didn’t give him any new ideas. “Um, I don’t…I’m sorry, but it just looks like it usually does. Maybe…what were you doing? When it cramped?”

The angel turned his head a little, just enough for Alberto to see his narrowed eyes and think that Gianluigi was going to leave again. So Alberto was rising up with one hand stretching out, about to stop him, when Gianluigi abruptly rotated his wing. Or tried to—he’d not moved it more than a few centimeters before it suddenly snapped down, hitting its edge into Alberto’s hand. Alberto reflexively grabbed it, then squeezed when something came at his head. He jerked back, felt his balance go as he went dangerously near the edge of the mattress and panicked, clawing himself back on with his free hand.

And as a consequence he ended up dragging Gianluigi with him, so the angel half-fell onto the bed. Something slapped at Alberto’s foot, then slid off as Gianluigi’s head reared up much closer than Alberto had been expecting. Alberto half-gasped and jerked back, losing his grip on the wing. But it was curving around him anyway, so it lightly slapped him into staying on the bed.

Then he could pull himself back to a safe spot and look up, and…well, Gianluigi was still there. Now sitting on the mattress, a grimace pulling at his mouth as he held onto his shoulder. He looked up as Alberto started to babble an apology, but didn’t really seem to understand it—to be honest, Alberto wasn’t making sense to himself, but the uncomprehending look on Gianluigi’s face seemed to go beyond that. Alberto stuttered, lost track of even his babbling, and then fell silent, just pressing his clammy hands to his thighs and wishing he _had_ fallen onto the floor.

“It was something like that,” Gianluigi said. He flexed his hand so his wing moved and Alberto’s eyes briefly went to it. When Alberto looked back at the angel, Gianluigi was pursing his lips. He moved his head a little, then pulled his lower lip under his upper teeth for a moment. “I moved it every way I can, but I can do that much before it—hurts.”

“So I really shouldn’t have asked you that, I guess.” Alberto pushed his hair out of his face, then turned rather jerkily towards the wing. He started to reach towards it, then snatched his hand back. Then he looked at Gianluigi, who’d gone so still he blended into the shadows better than the fox-demons. “Um. Sorry. I just. Well, I don’t have any medicine, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what would work on you, but…a lot of times, rubbing it helps.”

Gianluigi lowered his brows a little. “I did that. It didn’t.”

“Oh. Oh, well, it’s not…just plain rubbing. If you massage it—you have to follow the muscles, smooth them out,” Alberto said. He looked around, then wanted to hit himself for being so ridiculous again. “I’d show you, except…I don’t really have any muscles that are anything like the ones in your wings…”

He stopped talking as Gianluigi went stiff, his eyes glittering and hard in the darkness. Even the wing stopped moving so the slight, constant rustling of its feathers no longer kept the silence at bay, and…it was really eerie. The usual night sounds of cars passing nearby, the wind rattling roof-tiles, none of that was present. It was just dead quiet.

“I know you don’t want me to touch it. I’m just trying to figure out how to help,” Alberto finally blurted out, the silence getting too much for him.

The wing jerked towards him, making him start. It paused, and then Gianluigi slowly slid his hand from his shoulder down the top of the wing, bending it so the scar was tipped more towards Alberto. He was looking at it and not Alberto. “What do you mean, following them?”

He sounded odd, his voice low and kind of tight, but he held still when Alberto shifted forward, and then when Alberto reached out. Alberto cautiously laid his fingertips against one of the long primary feathers, which shivered violently, but then settled before he could withdraw his hand. Then he lifted his fingers and knelt up so he could reach down onto the back of the wing; he couldn’t just duck out and get on that side, since then he’d be off the bed.

And actually, he hadn’t noticed it the other times, but there was a slight scar on the underside, right beneath the other one. He should’ve remembered—he’d stitched that up too, but it wasn’t nearly as large as the one on the back, and the featherless area was much more narrow. “Um, hang on, I don’t think it’ll work this…”

Alberto pulled back his arm, then carefully worked it under the wing; the feathers extended a lot farther past the flesh than he’d expected, so he had to force his arm up between them. He found the bare patch again, but Gianluigi’s wing kept shaking so Alberto had a hard time keeping his hand on the same spot. In the end he just put his other hand on the underside to help support it, hoping Gianluigi would be okay with that.

He did glance at the angel at that point, but Gianluigi was still looking at the wing. Or trying to, since he had to do a lot of craning about. But then they both noticed their reflections in the glass balcony doors, which were very blurry but which might do…Alberto went back to feeling about the wing’s underside, trying to get his hand over that side’s scar. He did notice that there the feathers were very short and soft, basically fluffy down, but he tried not to get too carried away with that. Gianluigi definitely wasn’t a fox-demon.

“So…wait, let me see…okay, the muscles are going in this direction…” Alberto stroked his fingers along them, then stopped as he felt them spasming. “No, relax. If they’re too tense you can really hurt them by doing this. Oh, and tell me the moment it hurts.”

“It’s—it doesn’t.” The words brushed by Alberto’s shoulder along with a warm breath. When Alberto checked, Gianluigi wasn’t looking at the balcony door anymore, but up at the ceiling. His mouth was moving a little, but no more words came out.

The spasming stopped and Alberto tried pressing along them again. A long, low breath came from Gianluigi, but the muscles didn’t seize up, so Alberto stroked them again, a bit harder. In his mind he pulled up what he could remember from his anatomy lessons, but he had a feeling even if he’d had perfect memory, those wouldn’t be too helpful. These wings were much bigger and better-muscled than any chicken’s, and…and more layered. He paused, then probed a bit, backing off when he heard Gianluigi’s breathing change. There were enough similarities for him to roughly orient himself, but wings were so delicate that Alberto didn’t dare get fancy.

A sudden whooshing sound and then a rattling noise made his fingers go flat against the feathers. He stiffened up, then slowly turned around—he met Gianluigi’s eyes for a bare second before the angel looked away, at the other wing that’d just come up to curve around them, running into the bedside lamp as it did. Alberto blinked, then hastily ducked his head and turned back to the one he was supposed to be working on. As he did, he glimpsed a white-knuckled fist pressed to a thigh and immediately stopped. “Am I…”

“No,” Gianluigi muttered.

Alberto hesitantly rolled his fingertips over the wing a few more times, but then had to stop. He turned around. “No, really, if I am, I…”

Gianluigi was right there. Head bent and held a little to the side, and if it hadn’t been, his nose would have collided with Alberto’s jaw. As it was, Alberto sank down a bit in surprise and the dark line of Gianluigi’s hair slipped across the side of his forehead, like a finger’s touch. He blinked and pressed at Gianluigi’s wing with both palms. His mouth opened, but Gianluigi moved then, just forward enough for his cheekbone to graze Alberto’s eyelashes. Then their cheeks were lying against each other, and Alberto could feel Gianluigi’s breath tickling down the side of his jaw.

His mouth was still open, but he couldn’t manage to close it—he couldn’t even move, to be honest. He just sat there as Gianluigi slowly, carefully rubbed at his cheek, like a kitten testing out a pillow, uncertain as to what exactly it was. Somewhere around them, things clinked and thumped, and Alberto was vaguely aware that the wings were close to wrecking his bedroom, but that seemed almost outside of them. Everything was telescoped down to a few sensations: the surprising silkenness of Gianluigi’s skin, the dampness of his breath, the uneven softness of the feathers beneath Alberto’s hands.

He finally managed to spread his fingers, letting the down poke out between them, then slightly turned his head towards the angel. Gianluigi went still, then abruptly jerked back; Alberto’s hands snapped back together, trapping the wing between them and Gianluigi’s face only a few centimeters from his own. The angel stared at him, and for the first moment Alberto barely recognized Gianluigi in the startled, almost fearful expression and the eyes—light as bits of the sky, but so transparent that the depth of their wildness was shocking.

“Wait,” Alberto said. He wasn’t thinking; it just came out. But Gianluigi moved again, away, and Alberto pulled his right hand off the wing and had it cupped to Gianluigi’s cheek.

He _really_ wasn’t thinking. His hand had landed askew, his thumb down against Gianluigi’s throat so he could feel it shifting with the rapid, uneven breaths that were battering his face. So he lifted his thumb—Gianluigi snapped in the unhurt wing—then moved it over Gianluigi’s lip—jaw pushing down into his palm—and then he—

Alberto threw up his arms, instinct making him block the sudden rush of white into his face. He tipped, felt his balance go and twisted sideways to fall on his elbow. Then he cursed and rolled over, and scrambled off the bed.

But of course Gianluigi was long gone. Troublesome wing or not, he could still manage. Of course he could. Of course Alberto was a complete moron.

Alberto flopped backwards onto his bed, then stared at the ceiling for a very, very long time.

* * *

Somewhere around four in the morning, Alberto finally gave up on trying to go to sleep. He had to go to work in an hour and a half anyway, since he had the opening to lunch shift, and even if he got a couple minutes’ rest, he really doubted that it was going to make much of a difference in how well he did. After all, he could fuck up perfectly well when he was running on a full night’s sleep.

The thing was, staying up didn’t really give him much to do either. He’d spent long enough lying on his bed to know that he really, truly didn’t have the faintest idea what the—what had _happened_ with Gianluigi. And he’d tried to figure it out. He really had, starting with the gut-instinct explanation…but angels, he’d always been told, were above human needs. On the other hand, Sandro and Paolo were decidedly not, but Alberto had gotten enough hints for even him to understand that they were special cases, or not exactly angels, or…at any rate, what worked for them didn’t work for Gianluigi, and vice versa. So then there were the other possibilities, which mostly had been Alberto half-recalling bizarre-news chain emails he’d gotten and tabloids he’d browsed while doing his grocery-shopping. And so there was nothing, frankly. He had no idea.

Alberto fed the snail, who was also up. Then he sat at his desk and tried to think of a name for it, hoping maybe that that was different and mundane enough to distract him, but instead he ended up going over how he’d gotten the snail in the first place. By now he was certain it’d been dead and cooked when he’d touched it. He’d had butter smears on his fingers afterward.

“I don’t get it,” he finally muttered. Not that that was going to help, but it was still too quiet in his apartment. It was kind of creepy. This whole thing—the appearing-disappearing magical powers, Gianluigi’s wing, _Gianluigi_ \--was seriously starting to scare him. Well, it’d scared him in the first place, but…

Grimacing, Alberto gave himself a good shake. The way things were now, even he couldn’t stand his nervous maundering. There had to be something he could do. Something.

His calendar. It happened to be in his line of sight, so Alberto had actually been staring at it for several minutes now, but he’d only just finally had a useful thought: maybe the stuff had some sort of pattern. Like holidays, or something like that; his grandmother had had some weird ideas about All Souls’ Day.

Alberto reached out and pulled the calendar off the wall, then picked up a pen. After another moment’s consideration, he marked off the days where he’d done bizarre things. Then he studied it, but since it’d only happened three times, it was pretty obvious that there was no pattern to them. He stared at it some more, a slight throb developing behind his eyes, before dropping his head onto his hand and groaning into it. He really wasn’t going to figure this out.

Maybe five minutes later, Alberto made himself give up on that mystery, and instead went back to—well, he flinched, but then he made himself think about it anyway. He had had a hand in whatever was making Gianluigi act funny, and maybe Gianluigi’s wing too, so he owed it to the angel to try and sort it out.

So he wrote down the days Gianluigi had shown up, and then looked at the calendar again, but it didn’t seem as if there was any pattern to them. Except—except every time Gianluigi had shown up, then the next day…the next day…

Alberto checked it over twice. Then he dropped the pen and jumped up from his chair in the same motion. He ran into the next room, then came back with his planner and double-checked dates just to make sure his sleep-starved memory wasn’t playing tricks on him. But no, he had it all down right. “Oh.”

Not that he understood much better, he thought as he looked at his calendar. But at least he had _something_ to go on. And his hand was shaking, Alberto suddenly noticed.

He put the calendar down, then started to reach for it again. Then he pulled back his hand, and after another moment, put it down on the arm of his chair. He sat down, slumped back, and stared at the far wall.

* * *

“Because he’s an annoying _shit_ and I’d be _happy_ to see his guts strung from the cathedral!” A second later, Zlatan came storming after the echoes of his furious roar, his fists thrust straight down by his hips and his eyes sort of flickering between brown and yellow.

“Zlatan—” Paolo’s head poked around the corner. He looked torn between a quieter but equally strong anger and a…Alberto wasn’t quite sure what it was. Something like nerves, only worse.

Zlatan turned around just then, blocking Paolo from view. He said something, and also gestured with his hand to emphasize, but it was in a strange, rasping language that made Alberto’s ears tingle. In fact, he thought the air in the hallway might’ve warmed up several degrees.

While talking, Zlatan hadn’t slowed down at all, so by the time he was done, he was just about on top of Alberto. Whereupon Alberto briefly and quickly reconsidered his idea, and thus managed to freeze himself in place so he took Zlatan’s shoulder in the nose.

It was a pretty hard blow, so as he stumbled backwards, Alberto was just glad he hadn’t heard any crunching noises. He grabbed for his nose, then for the wall behind him. Then he threw up his hands in a panic as something seized his waist.

“Hey!” Zlatan’s teeth were very large and white. And then he sealed his lips over them and glared down at Alberto. His eyes were yellow, with slit pupils, but then they thankfully went brown and human. He let go of Alberto, then stepped back, frowning. “You always stand where somebody’s going to run you over?”

After some breathing—which he hadn’t been doing in the past couple seconds, actually—Alberto persuaded his arms to lower. Then he rubbed at his nose, which was still a little sore. “Um, can I talk to you?”

Zlatan cocked his head. He moved again, sliding his feet so they were even with each other. Which somehow made him look taller and more likely to sink fangs into the top of Alberto’s head, and that last part was entirely Alberto’s irrational fear but it didn’t make it any less vivid. His nose twitched.

Then Zlatan looked down at himself, and so Alberto looked there too, and…and Zlatan had two burn-marks on his clothes. As in the cloth had been completely crisped away to reveal skin—and how that wasn’t burned Alberto didn’t know, because the edges of the hand-shaped holes were not only black, but melted-looking. Alberto suddenly realized that the hallway really smelled awful, all acrid and pungent.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think we can talk,” Zlatan said casually. He lifted a hand and flicked a finger at the edge of one hole. “Huh.”

“Oh! Oh, God, I’m so sorry, I’ve been trying not to touch—I didn’t mean to—I don’t even _know_!” Alberto wailed. He wailed. He fully admitted it, and moreover, admitted he was doing it while backing into the wall and waving his hands pointlessly about. It wasn’t getting to him; it’d gotten to him when Gianluigi had dropped out of the kitchen ceiling to bleed all over the floor, and Alberto just had never gotten his footing back. “It’s just going on, and I don’t—”

Zlatan came at him. Alberto started to warn him, but the demon was moving too fast so instead Alberto jammed his hands inside his coat, figuring that so far he hadn’t managed to do anything to himself. And even if that didn’t turn out to be the case this time, better him than anyone else.

Hands grabbed his upper arms, nearly shaking his fingers free of the—so far not burning—cloth in which he was tightly wrapping them. He was yanked forward, and then…and then…Zlatan jammed his nose into Alberto’s hair and sniffed really hard, so that Alberto could feel his scalp trying to lift into the demon’s nostrils. And now Alberto was extremely frightened and extremely confused.

“Huh. _Huh_.” Another big sniff, and then Zlatan stepped far enough back for Alberto to see that the hallway was empty, Paolo having apparently gone elsewhere. That was briefly relieving, but then Zlatan moved back into view, a thoughtful look on his face, and Alberto’s nerves went spasmodic again. “So you wanted to talk to me?”

“Um, Figo, actually,” Alberto stammered.

Then he winced, but Zlatan in fact didn’t hurt him. Instead the demon looked even more thoughtful before he finally nodded. “Good idea, actually. You working—oh, who cares. Sandro’s always looking for a reason to bitch at me anyway. Let’s go.”

Then he grabbed Alberto again, and before Alberto could even think about resisting, dragged them off.

* * *

Figo finally lifted his head from his hand, then stared back at Zlatan’s, Alberto’s and several foxes’ expectant faces. “Well, theoretically—”

“Fuck the theory, okay? I’ve _seen_ it work. I told you. _Paolo_ told you, didn’t he? With all the rest of the…” The end of Zlatan’s sentence was abruptly cut off as he spun on his heel and stalked off into the next room.

The foxes’ heads swiveled to follow him, then turned back to gaze at Figo, who was looking after Zlatan with a half-bemused, half-irritated look. Then he turned to Alberto, who blinked and straightened up.

“Do you know if Zlatan and Paolo were arguing before you came?” Figo asked.

Normally Alberto didn’t like answering that sort of question, since it usually just led to gossip and, depending on which relative, a big mess at the next family dinner. But one, Figo wasn’t family, and two, Zlatan was doing something in the kitchen that made the fox Alberto thought was Raúl leap up and race over, his tail held stiff and high. “Maybe? I only heard the very last of it, by accident—”

The deep furrows in Figo’s forehead returned. “Was Zlatan yelling?”

Alberto nodded.

Figo grimaced. He started to roll his eyes as well, but halfway through he stopped and just pushed himself back from his desk. Then he got up and walked into the kitchen. A couple minutes later, Zlatan yelled something again and there was a ferocious bang followed by a yipping and scurrying feet. Raúl scooted out of the kitchen, paused to shake some kind of black dust off of him, and then walked more sedately over the huge furry lump that was Mori. He sat down by the wolf, then began to groom himself. Which probably meant Figo was okay. At least, Alberto hoped so.

“That’s so weird.”

Alberto jumped, then jerked around to look at the floor, only to find it two foxes short. Then he looked up, and fox-eared Cesc plus a taller demon Alberto hadn’t…he hadn’t been introduced to the human form yet, anyway…were padding around the table. The other fox-demon detoured off into the hall, but after retrieving a bag of chips from a shelf, Cesc bounded back over to perch on the table beside Alberto.

“I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something like that. I guess it _is_ technically possible, but…hmmm.” Cesc opened the bag, pinched out a chip and munched pensively on it. “Especially with angels. They’re a lot more about the rules and keeping to themselves, you know? No offense, but I’m weirded out just knowing that Gianluigi’s been visiting you regularly.”

“Why?” Alberto asked. The bag tipped towards him and he glanced at it. The latest bout of weirdness had worn off long ago—after he’d accidentally melted Figo’s doorknob in trying to turn it—so it’d be okay to take one. But he wasn’t actually that hungry, though it was way past lunch. “Do people not like him? I know Zlatan doesn’t seem to, but…well…I thought that that was because they’re…”

The other fox-demon came back with a couple glass jars of…things…under one arm. He checked the clock on the wall, then began to move purposefully about the room, setting things down and taking up others and nudging at furniture like he was arranging for something. He was actually pretty tall, maybe as tall as Alberto, with shoulder-length brown hair. Every so often he’d stop and Raúl would bark or yip, and then he’d start again.

“…oh, that’s nothing important. Don’t worry about it and just ignore Sergio,” Cesc said, offering the bag again. He grinned when Alberto started, then finally took a chip. Then he ate another one himself. “But yeah, angels, demons, we kind of have to hate each other. That said, there are some who aren’t as bad as others. Like, Gianluca…he’s an angel too, and he does his job all right, but he won’t go out of his way to mess with you. If you’re just walking down the street, he’ll leave you alone. Gianluigi, he’d try and kill you.”

Alberto blinked, then looked down at his hands. He twisted the fingers of one around the wrist of the other, feeling his throat tighten and an odd hard lump form in his stomach. “Are you…are you saying that, or have you…”

When he looked up, Cesc wore a sympathetic expression, but his eyes refused to lie to Alberto. “Hey, we’re fast. And we _are_ actually legion. We can take care of ourselves. It’s just annoying.”

“Oh,” Alberto said. That lump got bigger.

“It’s not your problem. Well, okay, it is, since you have a soul and all that…but seriously, don’t worry too much about it. It’s all just really stupid anyway. I have to go with Zlatan there, even if he is an asshole.” Cesc took a moment from his chip-eating to stick his tongue out in the direction of the kitchen, which had quieted down considerably. Then he turned back to Alberto, his eyes bright and curious. “Anyway, that’s really interesting if Gianluigi’s nice to _somebody_. I never would’ve pegged him for that. What’s he like?”

Something bumped against Alberto’s ankle, and when he looked down, a pair of questioning eyes looked back. He paused, then popped his chip into his mouth and hastily ate it as he lifted the fox into his lap. It fluffed out its tail and lifted its head before he’d even gotten his hand into place. “He’s nice. Well, he’s hard to figure out. I think a lot of that might be his wing, which…I don’t know, it won’t heal and it’s been really bothering him. And I tried to fix that, so maybe that’s why—”

Alberto trailed off, not entirely sure that Cesc was actually listening to him. The fox-demon initially had been frowning at the now bonelessly lolling fox on Alberto’s knee, but then he’d jerked up his head and looked off to the side. Sergio had looked the same way, going a bit stiff, and after a moment Alberto realized that the whole apartment had gone quiet. Even Zlatan and Figo in the kitchen.

“Oh. That’s not good,” Cesc suddenly said.

“What?” Then Alberto began to ask for more details, but the fox suddenly leaped off his lap and melted into a shadow that raced across the floor, towards one of the windows. Alarmed, Alberto started to get up, but at the same time, Sergio tossed whatever was in his arms onto the couch, then ran back into the hall. “Wait, what’s—”

Cesc dropped his bag of chips as the other foxes quickly scattered into shadows. He glanced towards the kitchen, then shook his head and looked up at Alberto. Then he grabbed Alberto’s wrist and tugged them towards the stairs. “You need to go. This might get a little messy.”

“Gila, you need to—Cesc?” Zlatan’s voice suddenly barked.

And Cesc didn’t miss a beat as he called back over his shoulder, still dragging Alberto along. He was amazingly strong for his size. “I’m taking care of him! Don’t worry, I like him!”

“Thanks, Cesc! He’ll be fine,” Figo said. “Damn it, Zlatan, I thought you said—”

“I ate him! I had the indigestion to prove it! I don’t know where these are coming from! And—and why here? I thought _you_ said—”

“Oh, never mind. Mori, where’d you put the shotguns?”

Then Cesc and Alberto were clattering down the stairs, Alberto barely keeping up as Cesc was also, as he’d said, _fast_. A couple of times Alberto stumbled, but Cesc kept them moving so quickly that Alberto’s feet just slid to the next step, so he didn’t end up falling. They hit the bottom at nearly a dead run, and though the world was bobbing madly, Alberto did notice that Cesc’s ears had flattened all the way back against his head.

At first they went for the front door, but then Cesc abruptly changed his mind and reversed them, nearly twisting Alberto’s ankles in knots in the process. He didn’t give Alberto a chance to recover either, but instead hauled them towards the back like their—their lives depended on it. Alberto sucked in a breath. “What’s going on?”

“Your stupid angel friend!” Cesc shouted back. “He messed with Gaap—broke truce! The last time, it was a big nasty war and everyone got tired—but he decided to start it up again!”

“What?” Alberto said.

They skidded out a door and into a narrow alley. Cesc did pause there, whipping his head back and forth and sniffing like Zlatan often did. His eyes perked up, then went down again. Then his fingers tightened around Alberto’s wrist, and Alberto got ready to go again.

But as they took off, Alberto happened to look up. He went stiff, then yanked hard against Cesc, trying to pull them back inside. Cesc fought him on it, mostly because Alberto wasn’t nearly coherent enough to explain he had a really good reason for doing it, but then the fox-demon looked up. His eyes went wide a moment before he cannonaded into Alberto.

They missed the door, and just barely missed the wall, thanks to something Alberto stepped on that turned his ankle. The joint locked, then burst into pain so he couldn’t help falling down. He caught himself on one hand, then pushed himself back up and looked around for Cesc, who’d let go when Alberto had stumbled. At first he didn’t see anything, but then he saw the dark spot flowing along the wall.

And then, now at the end of the alley instead of on the roof, a gigantic black dog. It was as big as Alberto’s car and its teeth, which were prominently displayed because the thing was grinning unpleasantly, outdid even Zlatan’s longest fangs. Gobbets of foamy saliva dripped out between them, stark white in comparison to the glossless black fur and the fiery red eyes.

Alberto froze in place.

The dog was looking at him, but a moment before the shadow on the wall leaped off into solidity, its head snapped around to that. Then it-- _shrugged_ , its feet not moving as its neck eeled out.

Cesc managed to change direction in mid-air so he landed on the back of the dog’s neck instead of in its mouth. Then he whipped about and clawed at the dog’s eyes, but actual flames shot out of those and Cesc fell back. And when the dog tossed its head, Cesc was flung off as if he hadn’t even tried to hold on—or maybe his paws were too burned.

It didn’t look like Cesc was going to land on them, Alberto thought, and then didn’t think at all as he jumped forward to catch the fox. He got Cesc all right, cradling him securely, but then—he looked up and the dog was barely a meter away. Its steamy, stinking breath plastered his clothes back against his body.

A tiny little whine came from Alberto’s arms. He tightened his grip, but couldn’t exactly look away from the dog. He did manage to drag back his foot, but the dog moved forward so they were still the same distance apart. And then again, so it was clear this was just a little game and Alberto had a sudden, uncomfortable sympathy for the rats they assiduously hunted down and tossed out of the restaurant. But he kept going. It wasn’t like he knew what else to do, and at least he was being allowed to move.

Except of course Alberto eventually hit the wall. He winced as his elbows struck it, then pressed himself up against it. Something dark caught the edge of his vision and he realized he was near the dumpster; Alberto carefully edged over till his arm hit that, and the dog allowed it. Then it watched with glaring eyes as Alberto very, very slowly sank down till he was sitting, his knees rising up against Cesc, who was beginning to squirm really hard so Alberto had to twist his fingers in Cesc’s fur to hold onto him.

Alberto’s elbow was poking into the space behind the dumpster, but the rest of him wasn’t going to fit. He thought Cesc might, but couldn’t afford to look to check. So he just sort of worked Cesc across him till the fox’s head was to the space, and hoped that Cesc would get the rest. Except then Cesc stopped struggling and started acting like a rock, and finally Alberto just closed his eyes and _shoved_ the fox-demon into the gap.

Cesc went, but something burning and wet and slightly giving stopped Alberto’s elbow. He felt a low, thin, terrified noise come from his throat and he didn’t bother trying to stop it.

He didn’t want to open his eyes, but as time dragged on and nothing happened, it just got too much for him. So he looked.

The dog pushed back, removing its gum from where it’d been shoved against Alberto’s arm. As he lowered that, the dog dropped its lower jaw in a grim smile. It took a deep, whuffing breath, all but sucking the air from Alberto’s lungs, then snorted. Something deep in its mouth stirred, coiling snakelike, and then there was a blackish blur across Alberto’s vision and _pain_ in Alberto’s throat, and he choked and grabbed at his neck, which was slippery and warm and red…when he lifted his hand…

…as his hand fell, the world faded.

* * *

“You asshole, you could at least mention that you’re going to do something before you get hellhounds set on all of us,” Zlatan snarled, stomping through the door. “For that matter, you never should’ve messed with Gaap in the first place, or do you not remember how you did against the _last_ duke of Hell you went up against? You know, where Henke and I saved your ass?”

Gianluigi suppressed a muted quiver of irritation as he reluctantly followed the demon. Normally he would have just left, but one hellhound hadn’t yet been tracked down and its stench was all over this place. “Henrik did some good there, but I fail to remember that you did anything except try to ensure you could continue to corrupt Paolo and Sandro.”

“Oh. Oh, that’s so—I don’t even have the _words_ , you’re so fucking stupid.” The demon waved his hands about his head. He kicked a few bookshelves. It was an interesting display of why wrath was deservedly a major sin. “I made sure you didn’t bleed to death!”

“Angels don’t bleed to death. And you carried me because that human and Sandro made you. You didn’t do anything after that except yell at Alberto as _he_ tended to my wing,” Gianluigi pointed out. He paused, assessing the strength of the trail, and then went towards the back. “Incidentally, you also got in the way this time. If you hadn’t—”

Zlatan threw something, which Gianluigi easily ducked. “I saved your ass again! If I hadn’t shown up with Paolo, you’d still be stuck in that fucking cave. Yeah, so Gaap would be stuck too, but he wouldn’t make _nearly_ as nice company as _Alberto_.”

Something about the demon’s tone, all curling with insinuation, nagged at Gianluigi, and enough so that he found himself turning to actually give the demon a full response. He frowned at himself, then twisted back around.

“And what am I doing now? Helping you hunt down hellhounds! And you know what, Paolo didn’t even talk me into it. No, actually we had a fight over this, and then I go and help you anyway! So why the fuck did I get in a fight with Paolo? I hate that. _He_ hates that. And it didn’t even do anything,” Zlatan snapped. It wasn’t quite clear for whom he actually meant his words, but he was glancing Gianluigi’s way, so presumably some of it was for Gianluigi.

“Consider it a display of God’s infinite mercy in giving all his creations a chance of redemption.” Gianluigi wandered behind a bookcase, then looked down the aisle to spot an open door. The trail seemed to lead towards it, so he headed that way. And ducked whatever Zlatan threw at him this time.

The human entered somewhere around then, since Gianluigi then heard him scolding Zlatan for treating priceless grimoires like that. In Gianluigi’s opinion, it was all the better that Zlatan’s demonic inclination for chaos resulted in the destruction of unholy devices like that. It was a neat, circular resolution in keeping with the holy preference for law and order.

“You know, Sandro annoys me, but I can always respect him for putting all of himself in what he does. Even if he’s wrong most of the time,” Zlatan muttered, apparently back. He tried to elbow past Gianluigi, but found the narrowness of the aisle unaccommodating of his lack of patience. “You, though…you spout so much bullshit. I can’t ever tell if you have an actual _thought_ in there.”

More of those pestiferous fox-demons were clustered around the back door. One or two looked up, but strangely enough, they didn’t scatter as they normally would have before Gianluigi. Who found Zlatan’s sophomoric attempts at intelligent ripostes mostly pathetic, but a little amusing; Gianluigi was comfortably aware of his worth and wasn’t about to doubt himself simply because a demon, and a rather lowly, if lucky, one at that, didn’t like him. He had taken care of Gaap, who’d been tolerated for far too long—before his fall, Sandro might have put his energies to better use there, instead of engaging in so many petty scuffles with Zlatan—and he would have dealt with Asmodeus as well if he’d been allowed a full chance. And then his wing wouldn’t ache all the time.

“It’s amazing Gila seems to think you’re so nice. You act differently with him?” Zlatan said, arching his brow.

One of the foxes lifted its head to stare at Zlatan. Then it ran up to him and addressed him in some gravelly demonic tongue, which Gianluigi ignored since it had very little likelihood of being of any important. “Alberto’s one soul out of many striving for redemption. He gets as fair a treatment as I give any—”

“You’re getting mad. You know, I’m getting to be pretty good friends with him, too. What do you think about that?” Zlatan grinned, not paying any attention to the fox-demon either. Then he hissed and glowered down; the fox had apparently bitten his ankle. “Oh, what?”

“I think you’d do well to keep your distance. My tolerance for you, like it was for Gaap, is very marginal,” Gianluigi said, continuing on. He did feel a flare of anger rise in him, and he wasn’t entirely uncomfortable with it since it was correct to detest the corruption of demons, and to battle it at every opportunity. But still, the strength of his anger, and his strange tendency to find himself at Alberto’s apartment, and that other night…

…it’d been an aberration, and he’d looked at it and dealt with it, he reminded himself. He’d killed Gaap and consequently proved that he wasn’t straying and was still fulfilling his duties with the proper mindset. No doubt his wing would stop hurting shortly as well. As for Alberto, he’d been kind, but he did seem to present a peculiar challenge to Gianluigi’s sensibilities, and so Gianluigi would have to rise to meet that and show to himself that he could resist—

Gianluigi walked out the doorway into an alley. He looked one way, then the other, and one of the three fox-demons who he’d met during the Asmodeus matter raised a tear-stained face to him. “Oh,” it said. “Oh, _you_. Where were you? _Where were you?_ You—he was just trying to—”

Then it jerked its head back down, drawing Gianluigi’s eyes to the irregular pool of blood around it and around—Gianluigi looked away, then blinked. His chest suddenly hurt, as if a blade had been stuck to it, and when he touched the corners of his stinging eyes, he felt something wet. He blinked again, not understanding, and for some reason the sound of his breath seemed to roar into his ears, overwhelming all other sounds. Even the ever-present, if distant, chiming of Heaven. He didn’t hear it. He just heard the breathing, harsh and fast and short. It sped up and grew louder as well, till he found himself clapping his hands over his ears to try and muffle it, but it just rose in a battering crescendo, to the point that he knew his head would burst.

Then, very gradually, it subsided. Gianluigi opened his eyes and found he was kneeling in the blood. And in fact he was so disoriented that he actually put a hand into the sticky, cold stuff before he remembered.

“…oh, _fuck_.” It took a moment to recognize the voice as Zlatan’s; something was still distorting Gianluigi’s hearing, making it sound as everything was coming from miles away. “Fuck. Paolo is going to kill—he’s going to kill _you_ , you fucking asshole! This is your fault! You and your ‘I don’t give a damn about Gila,’ your—look at him!”

Something struck the side of Gianluigi’s face. The force of the blow wasn’t that great, he dimly recognized, but all the same it tipped his balance and he fell over. He caught himself with one hand on the ground and the other on something that…gave. Limp and cold, and then he was looking into open, staring eyes. “What?”

He didn’t recognize his own voice, and in fact thought Zlatan had spoken again until Zlatan actually did speak, and Gianluigi could hear how different the fury in it was from the cracking, weak rasp of his voice. “You! You’ve been visiting him, telling yourself you don’t care—well, you’ve been bleeding all that ‘not caring’ into him because you were trying to get it out of yourself, you fucking idiot. Every time you visited, the next day he did something. He’s got no magic of his own, it’s not in his blood and there’s nothing in his history or his family’s—and the last time, I was there. I was there and I could tell it was your power. He _smelled_ like you. And—”

“—hellhound. The hellhound. He was keeping it from me.” The fox-demon. Cesc. He’d been called Cesc. Wavery voice, but stronger than Gianluigi.

“—it probably smelled the same thing. That’s why it was here, and not where…oh, fuck, where is _that_?”

Cesc moved. He bumped into Gianluigi’s arm, but Gianluigi watched that bow and then move back like it had no resistance in it at all. Then it started shaking, and so did Gianluigi’s other arm so he had to drop down to his elbows. Even though that put his face nearly into the gaping wound—he closed his eyes. He could feel the tears still leaking out of them, and squeezed them shut more tightly. But he still was crying. He was…crying? Angels didn’t shed tears. They didn’t feel sorrow, because they always had God with them.

“It’s over around the corner,” Cesc was saying. “Mori got it. Not—not soon enough. Zlatan, he didn’t deserve it. Can’t—can’t we do—”

“You—you’re a demon.” Zlatan snarled, so sharp and furious that Gianluigi stiffened. But then his voice dropped in volume, losing its rage for bitterness. “You bring him back, _Figo_ brings him back, you know what that means. He doesn’t deserve _that_ either.”

“But you’re different! You got out of Hell!”

And he severed his ties with that place and as a result gave up any power he’d had over souls, since that control was solely the domain of two places. Besides…surely Alberto wouldn’t be under Hell’s control now anyway?

The thought wasn’t a comfort. Gianluigi opened his eyes again, then gingerly touched the cold cheek. He remembered vividly how warm it’d been the other night, and—that thought _hurt_ him. He gasped at the intensity of how much, then closed his eyes again.

It hurt to make his wings come out—they didn’t want to emerge, for some reason. But Gianluigi forced it anyway, thinking Cesc had spoken one truth at least. This was _wrong_ , and so much so that—he couldn’t stand it.

“Whoa!”

“Gianluigi, you bastard, just leave. I’m not in a mood to—shit, your wing is bleeding. Gian—G—Cesc? Cesc, is he even listening?”

Something prodded Gianluigi’s elbow, then yanked at it. He resisted that time, instead pressing his cheek to the icy one beneath him. He could feel the ichor soaking into his feathers now, so he lifted that wing, making sure that the ichor would run down over his shoulder and into the wound. The voices were still yelling at him, but he put his hands to either side and jammed his fingers straight into the concrete, planting them in. That hurt, and the pain in his wing was verging on agonizing now, but it wasn’t anything compared to the feeling he’d had earlier. Still had, like ice and like knives in his chest.

It grew harder to hold up his bleeding wing, but then that seemed to lighten. Gianluigi started to lose the feeling in it, but stubbornly willed it to tip higher and higher, trying to get more ichor out. He still couldn’t sense any warmth, and he was—he pushed that thought away. He did know what he could do.

He did it. He bled out his wing, till he knew it was crumbling and falling apart, like a leaf desiccated by fall, but it had to be more. Life was fragile, and cost so much—he could pay that. He had to.

Then, very faintly, he heard a heartbeat. Gianluigi opened his eyes, and the unbroken length of Alberto’s throat was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. The feeling in his chest seized up sharply, then suddenly dissolved, and he knew—he was happy.

* * *

Paolo peeked into the next room, then pulled himself back. He looked over at Zlatan, hunched in the corner and picking at dried blood beneath his nails.

“I’m not looking for him,” Zlatan said. He certainly was gazing at his hands instead of at Paolo. “First, I wouldn’t know where to start. Second, I’ve had it with him. He’s fucked up, and then he’s fucked up again, and you know, I’m supposed to _approve_ of that kind of behavior. But this is going too far even for me.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to.” After a moment, Paolo eased across the space between them. He stopped just short of Zlatan, not quite sure—he’d still been working through his anger and fear from their fight when he’d gotten the call. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you in the first place.”

Zlatan lifted his head at that, and then he snorted and looked off to the side. His fingers pulled away from each other as his claws clicked back into blunt nails, and then he reached for Paolo, still looking away. “Like that would’ve saved Gila any trouble. That jackass is so fucked in the head, something like this would’ve…you weren’t nearly that messed up.”

“You met me after I’d had centuries in Hell to cut away my illusions,” Paolo dryly remarked. He could at least talk like that about his time there now, though he couldn’t help the shiver.

By then Zlatan’s hands were hovering on either side of his waist. They did so a moment longer, then settled down and held him still while Zlatan turned and ducked to nuzzle at Paolo’s hair. “Honestly. I know how to say _no_ , okay? I just—don’t get why. You don’t even _like_ Gianluigi. I can tell.”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t…care. I never thought he was happy, even back when I didn’t know why looking at Sandro made me feel so odd.” Paolo turned his head so he could rest it against Zlatan’s shoulder without bending his nose. He felt his eyes start to close as Zlatan bent further, whispering lips over the top of his ear. “And maybe I don’t like watching other angels be hurt and killed?”

“Then tell them to date other demons. I’m busy,” Zlatan snorted. He pulled back a bit, his eyes measuring something in Paolo’s face. “You know, I’m not leaving. If only because that’d prove Sandro right and he’s such a smug bastard when that happens.”

Paolo had difficulty suppressing his irritation, and then he realized Zlatan was openly grinning at it and gave up. But deep down he was relieved, too. “I’d hope that’s not the only—”

Zlatan kissed him. And it didn’t go immediately hard and demanding, as usual, but stayed soft and careful and…thoughtful. When Zlatan drew away, Paolo’s eyes had closed, and Zlatan had to tap Paolo’s cheek to make him realize that.

“I don’t get it,” Zlatan repeated. “You angels, you’re so damn scared of being wrong. It doesn’t always mean that you can’t fix it later.”

“Because we’re not very experienced in fixing things. It took me a long time to just realize I could make a mistake,” Paolo said. He leaned against Zlatan another moment, then reluctantly pushed himself away. “I’m going in to talk to Alberto, and then…I have a couple ideas where Gianluigi might be. But I’ll call Sandro—”

“Oh, damn it, I’ll call him and we’ll do it while you take care of Gila.” Rolling his eyes, Zlatan twisted himself off the wall and ambled towards the kitchen. “I’d like to see you and a bed together at _some_ point today, and if finding that idiot’s how I have to do it, fine.”

Paolo waited till Zlatan had disappeared into the other room before he turned around. He took a step, then realized his smile was probably inappropriate and wiped it off his face. Which was a good deal less difficult once he’d actually seen Alberto’s face, pale and haggard and most of all, desperately confused.

“What happened?” Alberto asked. “I remember—it hurt a lot, and then it didn’t. And then Cesc was crying on me.”

“No, stay there. You’re going to want to sit,” Paolo said. Then he took his own advice, and after settling himself, took a deep breath. “To start with…there’s not really a delicate way to put this. Alberto, you were dead.”

Alberto stared at him for a while, and the man’s gaze was so open yet level that Paolo got rather uncomfortable. But then Alberto gave him a shy, nervous smile while glancing away, and that seemed more like him. Which to be honest didn’t still didn’t seem right for the situation. “Oh. I thought so, but…well, I’m not now. It was confusing.”

Paolo blinked. Then he rubbed at the side of his head, which was beginning to ache. “Yes, well…it should be. You see, what Gianluigi did…it may have consequences.”

* * *

Gianluigi looked down at his hands, then half-turned. His foot slipped on the roof-tiles and his balance swung far more to his right than he’d expected—though he should have, given the lack of one wing. Grimacing, he steadied himself with one hand as he completed the turn.

The sun was rising over the angel’s left shoulder, huge and red, so at first Gianluigi could make nothing of them save for their black silhouette. He still knew who it was.

“I’m sorry it had to be me,” Fabio said, easing out of his shadow. His wings absently flicked back their tips, twisting to level him out as he stepped along the edge of the roof. For once he lacked his usual smile and looked solemn.

“It’s your duty.” Aside from the strange lightness on that side, it didn’t really hurt, Gianluigi thought with a faint surprise. He’d grown so used to that constant, alien throbbing, and now…it was gone. It was almost a pain in itself, that absence.

Fabio seemed uncomfortable. He was another one who Gianluigi sometimes thought took too close an interest in people, but in the end he always managed to maintain some distance. But he looked sad now, his eyes dark against the brilliant white light streaming over his shoulders. He started to speak, but then looked off to the side and pursed his lips instead. His hand slipped into his pocket, then back out.

He gave Gianluigi the rest of the sunrise, waiting till the last strains of its celestial music had faded from around them. The last touch of God’s love on the earth before its mortals woke, and began to fumble and wrong and dirty their way through creation. The last real reminder Gianluigi had of Heaven, actually—he hadn’t been back there in a very long time, though he’d had his chances, and refused them as he hadn’t felt his responsibilities were done yet. But now…his memory of it wasn’t nearly as clear as he would have thought, he realized.

“The death was a tragedy, but that’s how it goes. All things have their time, and when it ends, it ends,” Fabio said. He paused. “You took the matter out of God’s hands, you know.”

Gianluigi couldn’t remember if back in Heaven he’d felt the way he’d felt upon seeing Alberto’s healed throat. He’d been trying, up here on the cathedral roof, but he couldn’t make the memory come. And it made him angry, but it made him something else as well that muted the anger and that confused him. “Of course. I know the rules.”

“You have a little while, before the effect on other things is so great that it’s irreversible.” Fabio took another step towards Gianluigi, then leaned forward so he just touched Gianluigi’s shoulder with his hand.

The lacking one. At first Gianluigi allowed it, but then it suddenly annoyed him and he tried to shrug off the other angel. But then a sharp pain stabbed _up_ through his shoulder, starting in the bone and then driving as if it wanted to come out through the skin, and he ended up clapping his hand to the spot instead. His teeth clicked as they ground over each other; he breathed slowly through his nose, then shifted his fingers over and back to press against the new scar as he twisted to look up at Fabio.

“That’s what it’ll be like,” Fabio said. He was rubbing his hand against his hip, not looking particularly happy with himself, but his eyes were earnest and steady on Gianluigi. “Consider it carefully, all right? It’ll be difficult no matter what you do, but either way, this isn’t judgment. This is simply consequences.”

“You talk like there’s a choice involved,” Gianluigi said after a moment.

Fabio’s mouth twitched, then pulled into a slight smile. Then he turned, his wings swooping softly over Gianluigi’s head, and walked soundlessly back the way he’d come. “Think about it.”

The air stilled and warmed, going thick like the last breath trapped in a dying man’s throat, around the angel of death. Then Fabio was gone, and the sunlight was slanting across the tiles, making that half of the roof seem perfect and shining.

Gianluigi watched the brightness crawl towards him, and was still doing so when he frowned, then closed his eyes.

“I know you know I’m here,” Sandro called, tone more than a little acerbic. “Damn it, don’t pretend like—”

“Great, get him mad and let’s spend another couple of hours wandering around holy ground.” Zlatan, on the other hand, sounded distinctly nervous. And farther away, probably still by the trapdoor up to the roof.

For once, Sandro didn’t sink to replying to the demon. Instead his shoes clicked and shuffled across the tiles till they were nearly on top of Gianluigi, who pulled up a knee so he could rest his arm on it as he rubbed at his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then sighed and looked up.

Sandro stood over him, arms crossed and face stormy. “I heard about what happened with Gila.”

“I suppose somebody would’ve called you and Paolo,” Gianluigi said.

“You _suppose_? You—never mind. Why are you here? Why are you not explaining to Gila why, after he’s been dealing with random magic for weeks without a clue about it and then was _killed_ by a hellhound that—”

Gianluigi closed his eyes, then pressed his forefinger and thumb over them. “Sandro, do you think I don’t know what kind of a mess I left? Or are you shouting at me because you’re under the delusion that it’ll make you think you have any more control over it than I do?”

Blessed silence for several seconds. Then something rattled, and the noise went on for such a surprisingly long time that Gianluigi opened his eyes to see what it was. He was too late, but given the way Sandro was scuffing his foot about, Gianluigi presumed a pebble had been dislodged and had bounced down the side of the roof.

“I’m worried,” Sandro finally admitted, voice tight and low. “You never appeared to think much of humans, except for how troublesome they are, and I can easily see you deciding to take this as an excuse to merely uphold that idiot belief. Which I can’t allow you to do.”

After a moment, Gianluigi looked up at him. The other angel had unfolded his arms, but hadn’t lost any of the tension that was holding him so stiffly. He favored Gianluigi with a further warning look before he half-turned, his hands going to tug at the hem of his jacket and then to rest on his hips.

“You put him in danger in the first place. If you don’t think you need to show him any consideration for that, you should at least understand you _owe_ him for making him suffer your error. That’d be justice,” Sandro added.

“You do care about him.” Gianluigi slowly began to push himself up. He had to stop several times to adjust his balance, and once he even felt his remaining wing begin to slip out before he willed away that spasm.

Sandro looked back over a shoulder, frowning. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to think some more, in a place where I won’t be so rudely disturbed. You can do whatever you think is fit, of course. You’re no longer of my concern—you never were in the first place, actually,” Gianluigi told him. Then his shoulder began to pain him—his unscarred one. He did his best to hide his grimace as he started down the side of the roof opposite to the one on which Sandro was.

“I mean it.” The simmering irritation abruptly dropped from Sandro’s tone, leaving only the determination behind. He’d always been unusually willful, and since he’d fallen, that characteristic had only strengthened. “You come for him and you’ll face me.”

“Isn’t that a little…disproportionate? I thought it was Paolo you worried about.” Gianluigi reached the edge, but then caught himself a moment before he would normally have leaped into the air. Then he shook. Once, the tremor running from his feet to his head as he stared downwards and began to see the concreteness of what he stood to lose.

Another rattle made him look up, and this time he saw the rolling chip of rock. He followed it till it plinked off the roof, then glanced upwards to Sandro, still and dark against the lightening sky.

“There are different degrees of love,” Sandro finally said. His expression was difficult to make out, as he had the sun to his back. “It’s…that’s what mortals know, and we can’t. Or shouldn’t…it’s not all God. You know, I still feel Him, a little. But with Him is Paolo, and then after them there are others.”

“You’re putting up a lesser being against God?” Then Gianluigi snorted and turned away, knowing that that furious glower had been coming. “You dim Him that way, you realize. And you think it’s worth it?”

It was a while before Sandro answered, and actually, Gianluigi had thought he’d left because he had heard footsteps moving above him. But that must have been Zlatan, since when Sandro did speak, his voice indicated he hadn’t changed position.

“If I didn’t think it was worth it, do you think I would have given up Heaven?” Sandro inhaled, quick and sharp. “It’s not like a substitution, Gigi. You lose that, and nothing is like that loss. But you gain too, and…nothing is like that either. It’s trading. And I’d trade again.”

“Can we go now?” Zlatan asked, clearly irritated.

Whatever Sandro said to him, Gianluigi didn’t hear. He couldn’t fly on a single wing, but there were other ways of moving about, and he chose to employ them then.

* * *

Though no matter Gianluigi went, he didn’t find any peace or even a hint of a resolution. It seemed as if once he’d begun to move, he couldn’t stop; if he sat down for a moment he found his fingers tapping, or his shoulder beginning to ache. The scarless one now, always, and he supposed that that was a reminder of how little time he actually had.

Never mind Fabio’s odd ideas, Gianluigi thought as he stared up the side of the building before him. _He_ seemed to think himself that he had some decision to come to, and he couldn’t shake the foolish notion. There wasn’t a choice. He’d usurped one of the powers God reserved expressly to Himself, and so he could either reverse his—

\--it wasn’t a choice, he told himself. It wasn’t. It was a result of an action, and…and Gianluigi had kicked the wall before he’d even felt the flash of anger come over him.

He stared at the slight scuff on the stone, then took a step back. Then he took another one, and then he kept going till his heel struck the opposite wall. Gianluigi paused, then slowly let his weight fall against the wall. His head went back and he stared at the sky, which had that startling, icy clarity only winter brought.

Eventually he sat down. He didn’t really think about it, and so he only really noticed when he moved his arm and his elbow bumped into his knee. Then he looked down at himself.

“Gianluigi?”

He started, banged both elbows against the wall, and then jerked up his head to stare. He hadn’t even felt—even _heard_ anything.

Alberto winced and pressed his hands against his legs, then put them behind himself. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What are you doing here?” Gianluigi managed to said. His voice was cracking, as if he hadn’t spoken in years.

“Don’t worry, I don’t think they noticed I’ve left,” Alberto hurriedly said. He glanced over his shoulder, down the alley towards the little sliver that was visible of the restaurant across the street. Then he sighed, his shoulders slumping a little. He put up a hand to push his hair out of his eyes. “It got too much…everyone was so worried and asking if I was fine, and when they weren’t, they were talking but not talking about—about you, and…I don’t know.” He frowned. “I just knew you were out here.”

Gianluigi winced, since he had no confusion whatsoever about why Alberto would be able to know that. A tightness closed around his throat, making it difficult to swallow, and didn’t dissipate even when he put up a hand to massage that it—which reminded him and he winced again. “Did they bother explaining anything to you?”

“Paolo sat me down and explained, or tried to explain. I don’t…know if I have all of it straight, but I think I’ve got most of it. I hope.” Alberto pivoted on his heels and pulled his arms in, twisting one hand around the other’s wrist. He looked down at the ground, then nervously slid his gaze over to Gianluigi. Then he hesitantly pushed his foot across the intervening space.

There wasn’t a point in avoiding him, but that wasn’t actually why Gianluigi didn’t get up, and it certainly wasn’t the reason why a strange flush of warmth rose into Gianluigi’s breast, then began to spread up his neck. He swallowed again and the tightness was still there, but it’d lost some of its sharpness.

After another moment, Alberto sat down beside him. The man glanced at Gianluigi, then abruptly chuckled as he ducked his head, gazing between his knees; his laugh was a soft, shaky thing. “You know, I think I’ve just given up. I don’t get things fast enough—well, I knew that before—and I really never have any idea what’s going to happen next now, and I’m just terrified all the time. I’ve actually gotten used to it. It’s not too bad. It could be worse.”

“I’m sorry.” The words hurt. Gianluigi had never really understood it when humans had described that sort of thing, not seeing the physical possibility except when they were screaming and their mortal flesh eventually wore out. But he did now, feeling the throb and ache in his jaw and throat and head. “For subjecting you to that.”

“What?” Then Alberto frowned, and then shook his head. “No, really, it wasn’t that bad. Nobody got hurt. Besides…Paolo said you didn’t know you were doing it.”

“Nobody got—you _died_!” Gianluigi said, jerking himself off the wall. His hands rose into his vision, and then he pulled them back as Alberto was flinching from them. After a stunned moment, he jammed them down between his legs, not knowing what else to do with them. “You—were dead. Your throat…”

Alberto grimaced and ducked away, his hand going to his throat. Then he pulled it back, and then, more slowly, he brought it up and gingerly laid it against the front of his neck. He stared at the ground in front of them, looking…it was unpleasant. It made Gianluigi’s hands try to lift from his lap, and when he forced them to stay put, his throat to close down so hard he nearly couldn’t breathe.

“It was really fast. It hurt—a _lot_ , but…it’s like, I can know it but I don’t remember it too well. It just was over so quickly,” Alberto said after a moment, so quiet the sound of a passing car nearly drowned him out. “And then…I don’t know, it just felt like waking up.”

“I’m sorry,” Gianluigi blurted. He twisted his fingers into fists, then dug his nails hard into his palms. The words didn’t come near to expressing the emotion pressing up against his chest, as if trying to blow that open, but then, he couldn’t even describe it in his head.

The man blinked, then frowned at him again. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know you were doing it, and…and you know, I probably should’ve run like hell instead of staring at that thing like an idiot. It wasn’t like that alley was a dead end. I just was…really, really scared.”

Gianluigi stared at him.

Alberto glanced over, then uncomfortably shifted his shoulders against the wall. Then he pushed himself forward, wrapping his arms around his knees so those were pulled up to his shoulders. He put his head down so his face was nearly buried against the dark fabric of his trousers, and so when he spoke, it took a moment for Gianluigi to make out the muffled words. “Paolo said—he said you’re not supposed to do that, bring people back. He said it could—it was going to make you…fall.”

“It will,” Gianluigi said.

He blinked as Alberto’s head snapped up and the man directed a strangely horrified look at him. Then Alberto fumbled over onto his knees and grabbed Gianluigi’s forearms, his fingers burning through Gianluigi’s sleeves so Gianluigi started. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—oh, God. There’s no way—no way you can argue about it, or anything? I mean, I can’t…can’t you say it was an accident?” Before he was even done speaking, Alberto was wincing. “ _Fuck_. That was stupid. Why can’t I ever say anything-- _do_ anything right? I’m so sorry.”

“I brought you back. It wasn’t an accident.” Gianluigi paused, still not quite understanding Alberto’s agitation, and ended up watching the man’s expression grow even more pained. The pressure in his chest ratcheted up as if in sympathy, and before he realized what he was doing, his hand found its way onto Alberto’s wrist.

He stopped breathing for a moment. Forgot about it in feeling the smooth skin and the muted warmth beneath it, the slight pulse beating on one side. Then he came back to himself, and realized that Alberto had said something. Asked him something.

“If I undo it soon then there’ll be no trace and I wouldn’t fall,” Gianluigi absently answered, still mostly in the feeling of Alberto’s wrist.

“Undo it? Oh. _Oh_.” The tendons in the wrist suddenly tensed to press into Gianluigi’s palm. Then they relaxed, and the light brushing of something against the back of his hand made Gianluigi look to see Alberto’s fingers lying there. Then up, and Alberto was looking at him oddly. Fear was in there, but it wasn’t the usual—and then it disappeared in a flash, and Alberto smiled. Small and hesitant, and understanding something Gianluigi didn’t. “Oh. Well…I got longer than I really was supposed to anyway.” Then the smile vanished and he looked afraid again. “Is it…I, um, don’t suppose there’s a way that it wouldn’t hurt so much this time?”

Gianluigi stared at him and…and the man meant it. He’d meant the—he hadn’t even forgiven Gianluigi, because he’d clearly never thought to blame him in the first place, and now he was just sitting there and saying…

Alberto’s face tensed. Then he ducked his head, tugging slightly at his wrist. “Um, Gianluigi? That…hurts.”

“Oh.” Though Gianluigi couldn’t make his hand loosen. He looked at his fingers around Alberto’s arm, then at Alberto’s face, and then—then he pulled harder.

It hurt Alberto again—that was in his face—but he slid between Gianluigi’s knees, his eyes wide and questioning. And blameless, and Gianluigi couldn’t look into them. That hurt him, made the cramping in his body seize up till he was shocked that he wasn’t collapsing in on himself.

So he dropped his head, and found himself looking at Alberto’s throat instead. He winced again, but then couldn’t help himself and pressed forwards, resting his face against that. Pushing into it, greedily soaking in the warmth, smelling the clean fresh scent of the man. Scent—he’d never found humans particularly appealing to that sense, but he breathed deeply over and over again, and still couldn’t seem to satisfy himself.

Alberto said something stuttering, then fell silent. His free hand nervously touched Gianluigi’s shoulder, and then brushed over the back of Gianluigi’s head. Then fingertips alighted on the nape of Gianluigi’s neck, and they were—he shivered and Alberto lifted his fingers, then put them back. Then carefully curled them to follow Gianluigi’s hairline as he shifted, his knee bumping against the inside of Gianluigi’s thigh. Gianluigi drew up Alberto’s other hand to his chest, and after a moment, its fingers tentatively stretched out, one of them slipping between his shirt-buttons to touch his skin.

He gasped then, against Alberto’s neck, and was only warned himself by the sudden tightening of his shoulder before his wing swept out and around them. He heard Alberto exclaim wordlessly, and the man also tried to move, but Gianluigi didn’t realize why till after he’d panicked and wrapped his arm around the man’s waist.

“Gianluigi?” Alberto said, slightly breathless. He was stiff with surprise, but he gradually relaxed. Although the finger that’d sneaked past Gianluigi’s buttons withdrew, and Gianluigi missed it. “What…are you…”

Gianluigi turned his head a little, just so he could better fit his face against the side of Alberto’s neck. He didn’t understand this at all, he’d never come across anything like it before, and—and he knew he’d never find its like again. He didn’t have to have a perfect memory of Heaven to know that.

It had grown extremely quiet, he gradually realized, and now that he’d moved his head he could feel air that wasn’t warmed by Alberto’s skin, and sense that it was still and thick. He shivered again, knowing what that was, and then released Alberto’s wrist so he could put both arms around the man, pulling him as close as possible.

Alberto stiffened again, then yanked at Gianluigi’s shirt. He’d seen. “Gianluigi, there’s a…there’s another _angel_ …”

Once he had determined which way, Gianluigi drew up his wing to block off Alberto from it. He pressed his face back into Alberto’s neck, then lifted his head at the same time that he forced Alberto, who was fighting him a little, down so as much of his body as possible was shielding him.

Then he looked over, and Fabio looked back, his sword drawn and the smile back on his face, the brilliant one that never touched his eyes.

“I thought about it,” Gianluigi said.

Fabio never bothered speaking when he was carrying out his duties. He merely positioned himself, feet shoulder’s-width apart, and lifted his sword. His eyes went to Gianluigi’s shoulder, measuring the distance, and then the sword came down.

Gianluigi had meant to watch, but at the last moment his head jerked aside, and instead he buried his sight in Alberto’s throat again. And it _hurt_ like nothing he’d ever experienced before, like the world was wrenched upside-down and then driven like knives into him, and then there was the _tearing_ \--the loss of so much, so much he hadn’t even realized he had—

\--and he fell. Onto Alberto, his arms still knotted around the man, bloody feathers fluttering up all around them. And Gianluigi breathed, and lifted his head, and the world wasn’t in fact destroyed but it was spinning around and around so he barely knew anything.

“Oh, my God,” Alberto whispered.

But he knew that face, Gianluigi thought, and he was happy as the dark clouded in on him.

* * *

“That’s going to hurt,” Sandro said. From the snippets of conversation Gianluigi had heard during the—surprisingly long and complicated—process of waking up, the other angel had been decidedly lukewarm about having him inside, and once Gianluigi was fully conscious, Sandro hadn’t displayed any signs of changing his mind. He slouched in the corner, his arms wrapped around himself, and glowered as Paolo put out a tentative hand towards Gianluigi.

“You really should just keep sitting. It’s going to take a while for your body to adjust—” Paolo started.

Gianluigi wanted to hit them both. Irrationally, yet with surprising force behind the feeling, and that was the reason he remained sitting on the bed. Of _course_ it was going to hurt, and to take a while: did they think cutting oneself off from God was _easy_? “What’d you do with it? Did you leave it there for some irresponsible dabbler to get at?”

Paolo stopped, his hand floating about a foot from Gianluigi’s shoulder. Then he eased himself back into his chair. “With what?”

“Oh, Fabio took it with him. Does he keep a collection or something? Because I find that a little disturbing, even if he’s the angel of death or whatever,” Zlatan put in. His voice was rather hard to make out, thanks to the food balled into one of his cheeks. He bent over a nearby table, then picked up something that got Sandro’s attention. “I mean, I didn’t keep Sandro’s or Paolo’s wings. Okay, I didn’t have time to, but…why would you want to?”

“Why would you even think about it? Fabio just wanted to make sure no stupid mage would find it and break open the Seals before Judgment Day,” Sandro snapped. His narrowed eyes watched Zlatan gobble up a few more tidbits before he finally pushed himself off the wall and came over to try and take away the plate. “Those are _my_ cookies.”

A slight grimace crossed Paolo’s face as he very clearly avoided looking over at the squabbling pair. Instead he gazed at his hands, clasped between his knees, and then up at Gianluigi. “Gigi. Listen. We did go through this before, and you should know—there are physical changes, too.”

“Which I assume include this pressure in my groin that keeps making me look at the bathroom?” Gianluigi muttered. He paused, faintly surprised at the fierceness of his own sarcasm, both in his voice and in the tense feeling in his head. Not that he should’ve been shocked; he’d known before that humans were suspect to stronger emotions as well as all those…bodily functions. It wasn’t like he couldn’t deduce things for himself, given he’d been observing mortals for centuries. “If you prefer suffering the weaknesses of the flesh, that’s your choice, but I’d like to tend to myself.”

Zlatan broke off from his childish hand-slapping with Sandro to flash a wrinkled nose at Gianluigi. “ _Why_ does he still talk like that?”

“Because he’s a pompous ass and the wings never gave that any grace,” Sandro snorted. Then he and Zlatan looked oddly at each other, as if they didn’t quite understand what had just happened.

Gianluigi ignored them and Paolo as he attempted to rise again. Nothing in particular seemed to be wrong with his body, aside from the dull throb beneath his bandaged shoulder, but his coordination was still somewhat off. He felt—heavier, and slower, and for some reason random stimuli kept distracting him: a vivid scarlet flash that turned out to be a mere scarf thrown onto a shelf, a sudden whiff of garlic and browning meat. It was hard to concentrate on what he was actually doing. And then he remembered. “Where is he?”

“Downstairs,” Paolo said, blinking. He paused, his lips parted, and then shifted back in his seat. His hands twitched slowly every time Gianluigi stumbled. “It’s a workday. The restaurant still has to open, and he insisted he was fine.”

“Which is a nice way of saying that you terrified him even more, and if we sent him home, he’d probably just collapse into a quiet little heap. At least this way _someone_ can keep an eye on him,” Sandro snapped. He moved towards Gianluigi, then turned with an irritable toss of his head and stalked out of the room and through a door.

Paolo had turned when Sandro spoke, and was already rising by the time Sandro had pivoted about, but he didn’t reach the door till after the other angel was clattering down some steps. He stopped there for a few seconds, his head slightly bowed, and then went after Sandro.

“They weren’t doing a terribly wonderful job of that in the first place, if it took you…to figure out what I was doing to him,” Gianluigi said. At the beginning he’d been firmly on annoyed ground, but near the end he started to duck his head and lower his voice without even thinking about it. Then his foot actually slipped and he had to catch himself against a chair.

When he’d righted himself, Zlatan had finally swallowed that gob of food and was staring at him with a crooked, toothy smile on his face. The demon leaned his hip against the table, but otherwise stayed put, only his head turning as he watched Gianluigi unevenly make his way towards what appeared to be the toilet. “Yeah, well, Sandro has that gift of being an ass right up to when something happens that he shouldn’t feel like an ass over, and then he does the guilt thing. So he’s still irritating. And you know, it might have something to do with you being a jerk when Paolo was in danger. Not that you weren’t a jerk with—”

“I didn’t. Know.” Gianluigi grabbed another chair, then let his whole weight fall on the top. The wood creaked dangerously, and the demand of his body also hadn’t lessened any, but the sudden intensity of emotion inside him wouldn’t let him go on. He gasped at it, and the feeling seemed to diminish a little, but still…falling apparently didn’t come with a ready-made set of explanations.

He stared at his hands, at the way their knuckles whitened and turned dark again as he clenched and unclenched his fingers. Maybe this actually had been what Fabio had been trying to warn him against, for it was—it wasn’t that painful, but it was much more confusing than any pain was.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t. You idiot angels, you never can think on your own,” Zlatan said. When Gianluigi looked over, the demon was turning away, heading for the door as well. “Well, look, whatever the fuck you didn’t know, you’d better now. Because he definitely doesn’t.”

It made Gianluigi flinch, though he still didn’t have an ounce of respect for the demon. He didn’t understand that either, but he put it out of his mind and focused on crossing the remaining few feet. That pressure in his groin was becoming dire, and anyway, the sensible, rational approach would be to tackle his confusions one at a time, break them down and absorb their lessons. It couldn’t be that difficult, if humans managed it so thoughtlessly.

* * *

Gianluigi was about an hour in the bathroom, not because it took him more than a few minutes to master the various demands of his changed body, but because once he was there and had that much privacy, he thought he might as well see what else he could figure out. As it turned out, that was more about Paolo and Sandro, and about that demon, than Gianluigi really cared to know, but he got some use out of his investigations.

He looked at the scars, too. Unlike with that wound to his wing, both of them had immediately healed, and healed so they looked as if they’d been there for years. It had been bloody, Gianluigi remembered, but otherwise he didn’t see why someone had bandaged him up; the cloth didn’t make the ache any less and it only restricted his movements when he wasn’t entirely in control of those anyway. So he left the bandages in a heap in the wastebasket, then opened the door and stepped through it. His gaze swept absently over the room till it was stopped so abruptly he put up a hand to his head, wincing as a stab of pain went from one temple to the other.

“Oh,” Alberto said. He’d jerked up from the sofa, but now he slumped back down, awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck. “I was wondering where you were.”

“I needed to—” Gianluigi didn’t know how to say it, or more accurately, he knew various mortal expressions for it but he associated those more with the vulgarity they really meant to convey instead of with the action. He gestured behind himself, feeling a growing sense of…his shoulders were tensed so they kept trying to draw forwards and down, and his face felt warm right up till he actually touched his cheek and found it to be the same temperature as the rest of him. “What are you doing up here? They said you were working.”

Alberto grimaced, then pulled his hand around to rub at his eyes, which had heavy dark bags beneath them. “I was, and I thought I’d be fine, but I sent out an appetizer as a dessert and then tried to have them serve a vegan table with a beef dish. So Sandro chased me back here and told me to take a nap.”

A sensible idea from him, for once, Gianluigi thought. And then he didn’t really have anything. He just looked at Alberto, noting the way the man shifted his weight from side to side and moved his hand around, touching his hair and prodding his wrist and grabbing his knee.

“Are you all right?” Alberto finally asked, looking away. He kneaded his hands from his knees up towards himself, then pulled them away to seize the sofa cushions. “Paolo said you’d be, but there was…I’ve never seen so much blood—sorry, ichor—in my life.”

“I appear to be fine,” Gianluigi said.

For some reason that made Alberto wince and jerk his hands between his legs so he could press them together. Then he hissed through his teeth, one hand rising to run through his hair. If he intended it to neaten up the disheveled strands, he didn’t accomplish his task. Instead he only tangled the hairs more, till in some parts they stood up in filmy ripples. “Well, yeah, you’re standing and everything, and—and are you cold?” He glanced over, then pulled his hand from his head to move it about. “I mean—we had to throw away your shirt, because of all the ichor…and only Zlatan’s clothes would’ve fit you but he said you’d probably rather freeze than wear them…”

“He can be fairly intelligent. All the more the pity that he insists on promoting his immoral qualities.” Gianluigi hadn’t really been thinking about it, but he supposed he was a little chilly. When he looked at his arm, he found it was covered in little bumps that didn’t give when he ran a finger over them.

“I’m not…doing anything right now, and I have a car. If you want, I can just go get some for you,” Alberto said, abruptly looking up.

It was a moment before Gianluigi actually paid attention to what had been said, as he slowly realized just staring back wasn’t an appropriate response. Then he didn’t quite understand it, though he ran the words carefully through his mind. “Get some? You mean clothing?”

“From wherever you live.” Alberto started to move his hands around again, but then seemed to see them and oddly enough, seemed irritated at them. He snatched them back to his lap, then stared down at them.

“I don’t…” Gianluigi looked at the ground without any good reason, considering it wasn’t relevant at all “…angels don’t need houses the way people do.”

Alberto blinked, then looked annoyed at himself again. “Oh. Sorry.”

Then he didn’t say anything, and didn’t look as if he were going to say anything. He did continue to shift himself about, squirming on the sofa with his hands all but taking on a distracted life of their own, but he didn’t raise his head.

“I don’t have spare clothes,” Gianluigi finally added, unsure if he’d been clear. “The ones I had—they came from my powers.”

At that Alberto finally looked up. He frowned, then twisted around so quickly that Gianluigi started and jolted an elbow against the doorway. The joint hurt a little, but Gianluigi didn’t really think too much on it, too preoccupied with the way little specks of gold seemed to appear and disappear in Alberto’s eyes when they widened. “Oh—oh! Wait, so where are you going to stay now? Does that mean you don’t have anything? Anywhere to go?”

“I suppose.” That was going to be problematic, Gianluigi realized, and bit back a sigh as he sank against the doorway. Considering the magnitude of what he’d done, he would’ve expected—

He would’ve expected a whole new world, utterly strange and disorienting. But the one he was in was essentially the same as the old one, only complicated in rather mundane, irritating ways. The only thing…he didn’t hear God, and the silence where that constant singing had been was awful and dark, but curiously enough, only when he thought about it. When he wasn’t—when he was looking at Alberto, he was fine. More or less.

Gianluigi had no idea what he could do now, actually. He lifted his hand and looked at it, and nothing happened. But then, most things now seemed to take more effort, so he concentrated…and a soft fall of fabric dangled from his hand. He shook it out, and the shirt looked fine, all its parts properly in place and the shape like his old one.

“Oh. Well, I guess that won’t be too much of a problem?” Alberto said.

“This is blue.” Frowning, Gianluigi flipped it over and found that no, he wasn’t quite correct: the buttons were black. He tossed the shirt, then let it fall over his arm, not sure whether he was more disturbed by the fact that he didn’t know why he didn’t like it—he hadn’t cared too much about color before—or by his utter lack of knowledge of how it’d come out that way, anyway. “I…wanted it to be white.”

Alberto started to say something, so Gianluigi looked up, but the man stopped himself. He rubbed at his knees some more. “So…are you going to be okay?”

Gianluigi opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at the shirt again, his other hand going to push at the odd cramp in his stomach—hunger? But it was paired with a sudden urge to pull the shirt over him, wrong color and all, and yank it around him like Sandro tended to do with his arms.

He raised his head again and Alberto was still watching him, eyes wide and curious and curiously pained. “I don’t know,” Gianluigi said.

* * *

“Go ahead and call the upstairs number if you need anything,” Paolo said, his voice fading as he moved away.

“Actually, call Figo because Paolo might be…busy tonight. Figo’s usually up late, and if he’s not, one of the foxes will get it. And they like you, so they probably won’t put you through too much shit before they wake him up.” Zlatan was still standing in the doorway, his face scrunching in a half-bemused, half-disgusted expression. “They are so _annoying_. I don’t get how you can stand them.”

Alberto scratched at the back of his head while he patiently stood there, one hand loosely resting on the edge of the door. “They’re nice, at least with me. And their fur is really soft.”

Gianluigi stumbled and slapped his hand down hard on a piece of furniture to keep from falling. He pushed himself back upright, then turned over his stinging palm to not actually look at its reddened flesh. Aside from the fact that they were demons, and therefore never to be trusted, something about the idea of Alberto petting them really bothered him. Though to be fair, that one had cried for Alberto—and that both made Gianluigi rate that demon as slightly more likely to renounce evil and want to keep him as far from Alberto as possible. And he didn’t understand where that second thought had come from.

He looked at what he’d caught himself on and when he found it was an armchair, he turned himself around and sat down in it. A couple minutes later, Alberto quietly walked in. The man went past Gianluigi towards the kitchen, absently pulling off his suit-jacket as he went—his shoulderblades moved beneath his white shirt, pushing against the rumpled fabric, and Gianluigi felt his face warm. And this time he was facing the TV and he could see in its glass that the heat was corresponding to a creeping flush.

“Did you have enough before you left, or are you hungry again?” Alberto asked. “I think Paolo said your appetite’s going to be a lot bigger for the next couple of days.”

“I—don’t think I’m hungry,” Gianluigi said after a moment. He did feel an odd craving, but it didn’t come with a sharp cramp of the stomach so it couldn’t be that.

After a hesitant look, Alberto merely nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Gianluigi heard him opening and closing cabinets, doing things, and then eating; after making the offer to put up Gianluigi at least till Gianluigi figured out the basics, Alberto had gone back to work and so had missed the meal Paolo eventually had brought up.

That had been a conversation Gianluigi hadn’t enjoyed in the least, and normally he respected Paolo’s past, at the minimum. But Paolo had kept making strange, implying comments about being considerate of Alberto and…and Gianluigi just wondered what living with a demon really had done to the angel. On the other hand, the advice on the probable new constraints on Gianluigi’s powers had been fairly useful.

He looked down at his shirt, which he’d eventually gotten to turn white. The fabric, at least; he hadn’t managed to figure out how to do the buttons and had gotten so tired over such simple work that he’d decided to put it off to tomorrow. Anyway, the black didn’t disturb him nearly as much as the blue had.

“Gianluigi?” Alberto leaned out of the kitchen, a plate in hand with a sandwich on it, and a light dusting of golden crumbs around his mouth. They held onto Gianluigi’s eyes and made his tongue roll around in his own mouth, to the point that he put up his hand in case that oddity showed. “Did you want to shower first?”

“Shower?” Gianluigi said. Then he sighed, and mentally noted down another complication of fallen life. “Oh. Which way is it?”

Right then Alberto had taken another bite of his sandwich. He immediately looked embarrassed, and tried to chew and swallow quickly, but only ended up muffling a cough into his wrist. Then he raised his head, sheepishly peering at Gianluigi, and pointed with his plate-holding hand. “Take a left. But it’s not like you smell or anything…actually, you always smell pretty nice—but it’s just, you know, if you want to.”

“I might as well, and get that out of the way,” Gianluigi replied after a moment. His eyes tracked back to Alberto’s mouth and he forced them away, then got up and left rather more quickly than he really had to. That flush was starting to spread from his neck into his face, he thought, and also he just—needed to move.

He took the left, then found himself in a somewhat smaller bathroom than Paolo’s had been. And the area with the showerhead was different as well, lacking a tub and having a door instead, but after some examining and experimentation, Gianluigi thought he grasped the essentials.

The water seemed to take a while to warm up, and as Gianluigi discovered that he decidedly wasn’t interested in stepping in when it was freezing, he just left that to run as he began to deal with his clothes. He unbuttoned his shirt and, after some thought, laid it on the top of the toilet’s water tank. He didn’t really like the disorderly way it looked there, but—well, he’d look into that later.

Gianluigi stripped off the rest of the clothes, then paused with them in his hands. Then he put down the lid of the toilet and dropped those on top of it. He looked at his trousers, then concentrated.

Making clean replacements for the rest of his clothes didn’t go quite as easily as the shirt had, and by the time he’d finished, the bathroom was thick with steam billowing from the showerhead. It made him cough and his eyes sting, and his throat feel as if it were being suffocated—Gianluigi tried cracking open the door, but then couldn’t get it to stay that way. But he happened to knock his elbow into a switch on the wall as he shut that in frustration, and there was a whirring and then a sudden rush of air towards a spot above his head.

That taken care of, he finally got into the shower. He’d been in water before, but—he just stood there for a few minutes, luxuriating in the stroking, hot sensation of the streams pounding down on his muscles. Sometimes the greater intensity of feeling had its advantages, he had to admit.

Gianluigi got around to the shampoo and conditioner first, having had to see enough advertisements projected onto buildings to know how those worked and in what order. He found he enjoyed a good hard scrub of the head as well, and probably spent more time than he had to on that. Of course, this was exactly why humans were so easily tempted astray, but Gianluigi had the thought that it was understandable. Then he blinked, frowning blurrily at the far wall. Suds got in his eyes and stung.

He moved on to the soap, and that was when—something odd happened. All he’d done was wash between his legs like he’d been doing to the rest of himself, but it felt _good_. Good in the way the hot water did, only a thousand times magnified and expanded and he didn’t even know how to describe it.

He did know what it was, because that led to more sinning than anything else, but experiencing it was just so—Gianluigi shook his head, then hissed as he accidentally cracked his arm against the wall. He pulled that in, then reached around to rub as the sore spot as he squinted down at himself. After a long, considering moment, he pushed his hand down his thigh.

“Gianluigi?”

And for a moment, it got _stronger_. A rush of something went over Gianluigi, making him lose all connection with the rest of the world, his blood drumming in his ears. He gasped, then dropped hard against the wall.

The pain made the dizziness fade, and that other feeling subside as well, though that didn’t entirely disappear. “Yes?” he said, and his voice sounded alien, croaking and thick even when he accounted for the noise of the water. “What is it?”

“Did you lock the—oh, you didn’t. Okay…look, I just remembered and I’m just putting in a fresh towel for you, all right? I’m leaving it on the sink.” Beyond the steam-clouded glass, a dark oblong swung forward to block out most of the room. Then a thin dark line extended from slightly above its midpoint, something swinging from it. It went towards the sink, then withdrew. Then the door was pulled shut.

And then Gianluigi collapsed down the side of the wall, till the bones of his pelvis abruptly protested at the hard landing they absorbed. His knees were still shaking, and when a sweetish taste filled his mouth he realized he’d jammed his fingers between his teeth. He was thinking—things, and he didn’t know where he’d absorbed such—it wasn’t filth, it felt too good and Alberto was in it and Gianluigi squeezed his thighs together, squirming desperately, and then something happened and then he just slumped there beneath the water. He didn’t understand it at all. It was so _powerful_ , and even afterwards, he thought he could feel something lingering, a warmish pulling sensation in his chest, and he suddenly, badly wanted to feel Alberto’s cheek again.

“God,” Gianluigi finally said, soft and pleading. But he didn’t hear a reply. He was on his own for this. _That_ was what he’d done to himself.

* * *

Still rubbing at his hip and buttock, Paolo walked into the bedroom. Then he stopped, frowning. He didn’t see Sandro anywhere, but it was long past when the other angel tended to go to sleep, and that was before he even took into account the long day they’d had. And then a thought occurred to Paolo, and he started to sigh even as that creeping worry chilled him a little…

…something on the bed moved. Paolo looked over, then finished his sigh in a considerably better state of mood as he crossed the space and sat on the edge. He waited a few moments before he prodded the bundled-up lump. “Sandro.”

Muffled grumbling. Then the folds at what Paolo guessed was the head-end tucked themselves inwards more tightly.

“Zlatan’s out fixing a hole he found in the perimeter wards. It probably was Gila, with the little bit of magic Gigi gave him—we’re going to have to adjust all the spells for him,” Paolo said. He briefly wondered again if it’d been a good idea to let Alberto take the other angel with him, but then, Figo had promised he’d make sure those two were protected, and Gianluigi wouldn’t be looking for him and so couldn’t get offended. And—Paolo paused mid-turn, wincing. He put his hand under his buttock again, then leaned over to pick at the sheets. “Sandro, it’s not _that_ cold…”

The sheets parted just enough for a small hole to be visible. “Paolo, by the time I cross the room my toes are numb.”

“You have slippers, and a whole drawerful of socks.” Paolo twisted fully around, then got onto his knees so he could look directly down the hole. If he tilted his head, he could just glimpse black wavy hair. “And I’d like to have some of the sheets too.”

“You should’ve gotten here first, then,” Sandro muttered. Not all of the bite in his voice was due to mere petulance.

It was still not easy for him, even if he and Zlatan seemed to have come to a truce, and even occasionally found some common ground besides Paolo, but—well, sometimes Paolo did want to tell the other angel it wasn’t easy on him either. But tonight Paolo was too tired for that argument, and so he idly looked about, then paused as he noted a peculiarity in the sheets’ folding. He reached out very carefully, so Sandro wouldn’t notice, and then jerked hard.

The sheets whipped out and up as Paolo jerked his arm up over his head. Sandro was caught wide-eyed, frozen into a half-curl on his left side, his hair wildly tousled as he stared up like a rabbit frozen in a flashlight’s beam. Then Paolo couldn’t help chuckling, and Sandro’s eyes narrowed: Paolo hastily began to pull down the sheets, but the other angel had already lunged forward.

He caught Paolo about the waist, but then skewed sideways so instead of going off the bed, they rolled, the blankets flapping noisily around them. Gasping, still half-laughing, Paolo half-heartedly grabbed at Sandro’s shoulders. He didn’t do anything else, and when Sandro finally let them settle on their sides, the white sheets forming a tent over them, the other angel was smiling as well, his eyes soft and fond. Paolo stopped laughing, then raised one hand to Sandro’s cheek. He stroked it, reacquainting himself with its curve and line and feel.

Sandro’s mouth slowly straightened out, his eyes darkening. Those thick dark brows of his drew down, and then his lashes fell as well as he shifted forward. His arms pressed into the small of Paolo’s back and Paolo yielded without a moment’s resistance.

It wasn’t always a fierce, almost frightening hunger, they’d found. In the beginning, yes, and frequently enough still that Paolo was glad for the endless samples of olive oil hopeful vendors sent them, but occasionally it was this: long, lingering kisses, more about feeling each other out, mapping the shapes of lips and jaws and high-bridged noses than trying to ignite something. Careful warming hands, molding to a side or a hip, or straying mischievously over a belly—Paolo twisted, suppressing a ticklish laugh, and then nuzzled at Sandro’s mouth as he retaliated with his own sly touch high on Sandro’s side. Their legs bumped together, then twined loosely as they snorted and smiled against each other, just enjoying the fact that they could take the time.

“I get cold, too,” Paolo eventually murmured. He trapped Sandro’s hand before it could get to that spot on his inner thigh, then drew it up to press soft kisses to its fingertips.

Sandro made a slight huffing sound, his decidedly not-cold toes lazily running up the back of Paolo’s calf. “I know, but you’ve got more than one place to go to get warm.”

Paolo paused, his mouth just lapping over the top of Sandro’s little finger. Then he tugged down Sandro’s hand—Sandro tried to duck away, but then jerked his head back up, irritated with himself—and looked steadily into Sandro’s eyes. “They’re not—”

“—substitutes. I know, I figured that out a while ago. And he’s not…he’s much more tolerable in bed. Probably because he can’t use his tongue for talking.” A rather wicked grin curved Sandro’s lips, and then he pressed forward to rub it away against Paolo’s flushing cheek. “I just hate waiting. And it _is_ cold out there. I think the furnace needs to be looked at.”

“If you had your way, we’d never get out of bed,” Paolo said after a moment, smiling again.

“You’re harder to get out of bed when it’s raining than I am,” Sandro breathed, leaning forward again.

Their lips had just touched when the air fritzed. Hissing, Sandro threw himself over Paolo, then tried to twist around as something thumped down hard at the end of the bed. He yanked at the sheets, paused with his hands full of them, and then flopped back with an irritated sigh. “Gigi, can’t Gila show you how to use the damn _phone_?”

Paolo put his arm back, then carefully worked himself out from under Sandro’s arm. As he pulled the sheets off from his head, he felt the mattress move a bit at the end, accompanied by a half-muffled, nauseated-sounding groan. “And you really shouldn’t try moving around places like that for a few weeks, at least. You’re extremely drained right now and—”

“Paolo, shut up before I find out how easy it is to get angry now,” Gianluigi muttered. When Paolo finally got all the sheets off, he found the other angel half-crouched over the end of the bed, propped up on his elbows. His hair was wet and plastered back from his forehead, and it looked as if he’d dressed in a hurry. “I need to ask you something.”

The blankets gently rippled over Sandro’s groan. “Zlatan is completely right in arguing that we shouldn’t even bother helping you. You are such an _ass_.”

“Sandro,” Paolo muttered. He waited till Sandro had thrown back the sheets, and, imposed-upon scowl firmly in place, sat up. “What is it, Gianluigi?”

For a moment Gianluigi simply stared at him. That in and of itself wasn’t unusual, but the look in Gianluigi’s eyes…if it’d been anyone else, Paolo would’ve called it begging. Gianluigi’s chin was up, despite the sickly ashen tone to his face, but his hands were trembling slightly against the mattress. He looked young and baffled and…frightened.

“I—want to—to—” Gianluigi glanced down at the bed, his cheeks slowly pinking.

Paolo sneaked a look at Sandro, who’d by now switched the annoyance for shock. Then he looked back at Gianluigi.

“I keep looking at Alberto and I feel—I want—” Gianluigi abruptly dropped his head into his hands, grinding their heels into his eyes. He sucked in a breath. “I want to lick his mouth. And do—these other things. I _want_ him.”

“Did you just realize you’re in love with him?” Sandro finally asked, voice faint and disbelieving. “You brought him back from the dead, Gigi.”

The disgusted look Gianluigi shot him was much more like Gianluigi’s old self, but it was only a flicker. Then Gianluigi turned back, staring down at the bed while he pulled his fingers through his hair; several strands came away with them. “Of course I knew that—you of anyone should know I wouldn’t fall for anything trivial. But this—I keep staring at his mouth, and thinking about his wrist and his cheek and—”

“That goes with it. It’s…it’s part of loving someone,” Paolo said, finally understanding. “It’s a normal feeling.”

“But it’s lust! It’s not—”

Sandro rolled his eyes. “If you say it’s a sin, I’m throwing you out—ow. Paolo.”

For the moment Paolo ignored the other angel; the elbowing had been barely a tap, and anyway, he could apologize later. Right now it looked like Gianluigi was going to have a nervous breakdown right in their bedroom, and…Zlatan should’ve felt him come in as well. He’d be angry he hadn’t fixed the wards to account for Gianluigi, and then there was their extreme mutual antipathy. “Gianluigi, it’s all right. It’s natural and as long as Alberto’s all right with it, I think it’s really just an extension of love. It’s…the physical expression of it.”

Gianluigi stared at him again, then glanced away. He seemed to be calming down, or at least wasn’t showing his agitation as much, but the tension was still singing off of him. “But…how do you even…do it?” He rubbed at his nose, rather clearly avoiding Paolo and Sandro’s eyes. “Don’t answer, Sandro. I know how people do it, but…” His shoulders awkwardly moved. “…he paid once for my error, and he doesn’t even think it was anything. I don’t want to fumble through this and have that happen again. Especially…it’s so… _strong_ …”

“Well, remember to let him breathe when you’re kissing him. I think…no, listen. I know this better than you, and I don’t want to see Gila dead over you again either,” Sandro snapped. He pushed himself up a bit, then absently pulled the sheets, which had slid down, back over himself and Paolo. “I think we can kiss a lot longer than people can. They need to breathe. And physically you’re still a lot stronger, so don’t accidentally break his neck or anything.”

After a moment, Gianluigi nodded, a look of reluctant thoughtfulness on his face. “What about the nose?”

Sandro blinked. “The nose?”

“When you’re kissing. That’s something I didn’t understand from watching—how do you know how to keep it out of the way?” Gianluigi asked. Apparently in all seriousness.

“You don’t think about the nose,” Sandro said impatiently.

Gianluigi looked disbelieving. “You don’t think about it? Even with that demon?”

“No, you don’t think—” Sandro paused, then turned to look at Paolo. “Wait. Do you?”

Paolo pressed his lips together. It wasn’t funny, really—this was Gianluigi still trying to apply his old ways when he desperately needed to adapt, if he was going to have any chance, and also Paolo had been in this position of asking silly but crucial questions so he shouldn’t judge—and yet it was, somehow. “No, you don’t. Look, Gigi…if you love him, you have to trust in that to tell you what to do. You can’t reason your way around it, and it is…it is the strongest thing in your life. And that’s not so different from before. It truly isn’t.”

For a long time Gianluigi looked at him, silent and judging, and though Paolo didn’t particularly like being assessed when he didn’t think he had anything doubtful around him, he didn’t protest. He knew what it’d been like.

Then Gianluigi was gone. Paolo started, then was beginning to get up when Zlatan suddenly stepped in. He’d been there for a while, given his expression.

“Oh, he got back okay. Hope he didn’t scare the shit out of Gila _again_ \--Gila was just on the phone to Figo, asking where the fuck Gigi could’ve gone,” he casually said. He walked around the edge of the bed, exchanging looks with Sandro, and then abruptly rolled in on Sandro’s side. His arm flopped across Sandro to reach Paolo’s lap, and then Sandro went down mid-protest as Zlatan nonchalantly nuzzled his way over Sandro’s belly, his hand fisting in Paolo’s shirt and then pulling him down as well. Then he looked at the two of them. “You don’t protest about my _nose_ when it’s poking up between your legs.”

Sandro opened his mouth. Then he closed it, and then he snorted and hit at Zlatan’s shoulder as he leaned against Paolo’s shoulder. “No, but it’s not there right—”

Zlatan dropped precipitously, and almost in the same moment, Sandro’s mouth surged up against Paolo. It was smiling rather smugly, and Paolo had to smile too. But then a hand pushed up the inside of his thigh, and Sandro’s tongue curled in his mouth, and _then_ it was all about the hunger. The overwhelming, terrifying, terrifyingly wonderful hunger that Paolo hoped he never lost.

* * *

Gianluigi miscalculated the landing. He’d meant to steer clear of any furniture, but the sudden pain in his elbows and left knee made it immediately apparent that he hadn’t succeeded.

“Gah!”

Whatever was to Gianluigi’s left assaulted his knee again. He hissed and jerked his leg back, lost his balance, and slapped onto his other side. His elbow went numb before exploding with pain as he eased his weight off it. The world turned strangely gray, the sound of Alberto’s voice fading out. Then it came back, one throbbing body part at a time, and Gianluigi could finally see that he’d wedged himself between the wall and a bookcase. He tried to pry his knee off the bookcase so he could slide out his leg, but moving made the gray haze come back. It wasn’t as heavy as before, but it was thick enough to prove Paolo right about his condition.

“Oh, my God, where did you go? I broke my door!” Alberto suddenly dropped before Gianluigi, his eyes wide and his hair ruffled into a haphazard crest. He reached for Gianluigi—who stiffened—then pulled back his hands. Then he scrunched them in his hair as if he meant to pull out a few fistfuls. “I didn’t hear any noise for forever, and when I knocked there wasn’t an answer, so I was thinking maybe you were hurt, and I called Figo and he told me you were _gone_ and _where did you go_?”

Gianluigi listened, and comprehended the words, but had a very strong feeling that he wasn’t quite grasping everything. Then his knee twinged again and he had to push himself up the wall to ease the stress on it. “I went—I needed to ask Paolo something.”

For a moment Alberto stared at him, mouth slightly open so the intriguing way its inside shaded from pink to black was extraordinarily distracting. Then the hands came out of the hair to slash down to either side, and the eyes somehow grew even wider, and the skin around the mouth drew so tight the little veins beneath it were visible. “I have a phone! I could’ve showed you how to use it! I didn’t know where you were! I thought you were—were dead, because I don’t know, now you’re a—okay, there wasn’t a body but maybe angels don’t leave bodies, and I don’t know anything and I didn’t know what to do and—”

“I…didn’t think of phones. I didn’t have to use them before,” Gianluigi finally said.

Alberto stopped mid-torrent, his mouth stretched as open as possible. Then that shut, with a click of bone or maybe of teeth, but the rest of the man stayed strained forward, staring wildly at Gianluigi. He remained that way for so long that Gianluigi hesitantly raised a hand, but then the man abruptly sat back on his heels, pressing his hands over his face. He rubbed them about, pushing up parts of his cheek between his fingers so it looked as if he’d developed lumps, before raking his hands roughly over his head. “Oh. Of course not. Oh…I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m sorry.”

“You called Figo?” Gianluigi said, frowning.

“Oh.” Wincing, Alberto pulled down his arms to awkwardly wrap one around himself. He grabbed his other elbow, then absently slid his hand up and down it, making his sleeve pull away from the paler underside of his wrist. “Well, I know you don’t like him, but he seems…he doesn’t mind explaining things to me till I get them, and he seems to know a lot. And…and I was really worried.” He looked back at Gianluigi. “Paolo said falling takes a lot out of you, and—and you haven’t, um, been looking well. I mean, not like when I saw you before. Though I don’t know, maybe that’s the falling. I don’t know.”

“I look different?” Something knocked into Gianluigi’s arm as he pushed himself up. His head was still clouding over whenever he tried to move too quickly, but his neck was cramping from looking up at Alberto.

It seemed like Alberto was calming down, or at least, his eyes no longer looked as if they were going to fall out of his skull. He sat back a little more, absently rubbing at his arm. “Um. I wasn’t trying to be insulting, because you look fine. I mean, you did and—well, you still do, but it’s just you get pale sometimes like you’re going to fall over. And I know you lost a lot of blood—ichor—” Alberto’s face took on an odd greenish tinge “—and when that other angel cut off your wing, you passed out. Actually, I thought you were dead.”

Gianluigi finally made it to an upright position. His legs were still jammed into the wall and the bookcase and the floor at uncomfortable angles, but it wasn’t too painful and, given the way his head was beginning to ache, it was probably a better idea to just put up with the narrow space for a few minutes. He wasn’t recovering nearly as fast as before. “I wasn’t.”

“I know, but you’re different and you didn’t need to be. You could’ve just—not gotten in the way,” Alberto said. He glanced down, then raised his head and the look in his eyes raised a corresponding twist of pain in Gianluigi’s chest. His hand tightened around his arm. “And now you have to use phones and you don’t have an apartment and I just, I’m sorry. I’m trying to do something, but it doesn’t really make up for it, does it? I’m so sorry.”

For a few moments Gianluigi looked at him, trying to figure it out. “Why? I had to get in the way. I didn’t have a choice.”

“I know.” Alberto’s voice went raspy and low, and the planes of his face dragged as if an invisible hand was trying to pull the skin off of him. He looked miserable. “I’m sorry.”

“But…why? It wasn’t your fault. You died because I couldn’t…I didn’t control myself.” Gianluigi paused, then grimaced at himself. He tried to push further up the wall, but banged his arm again and reflexively pulled that back into his chest so he could rub the sore spot. And not look at Alberto, since explaining something Gianluigi hadn’t even fully worked out was going to be difficult anyway and he didn’t want to add the distraction of the man to that. At least not till he got this correct. “No. I mean…if you want to control something, you first have to see that it’s there, and I…didn’t. Instead I let you take that on. Do you…”

As much as Gianluigi was having trouble reading his own emotions, he was relieved to see that he hadn’t lost the ability to read people. Clearly Alberto wasn’t understanding what Gianluigi was saying, though at least he looked less like he’d been sentenced to Hell before his time.

Which made a thought occur to Gianluigi, and he had to grimace at himself again. He wasn’t thinking carefully either, which wasn’t the entire problem but which certainly didn’t help. “That—Zlatan. He said you’d been doing magic.”

“Oh. Oh, right.” Alberto ducked his head again and pulled in his elbows, as if he were bracing himself against a blow. “I didn’t mean to, and I didn’t even know how it…worked. It just happened. Um. After every time you visited.”

“Because it was coming from me. I had these impulses I didn’t understand, and I was pushing them on you. Did they not explain this to you?” For a moment Gianluigi was mentally picturing the best way to tear up that demon, but then he recalled again how Zlatan had told _him_ , and had to wonder if there hadn’t been time to tell Alberto. “Never mind, that’s not important. It…do you see what I’m saying?”

“Zlatan sort of told me, but he and Figo got in an argument over it. Zlatan said he’d seen Paolo doing it, and I don’t remember why Figo was disagreeing.” Little creases appeared around Alberto’s eyes as he thought, making Gianluigi wonder what they felt like before he irritably dismissed the thought for the irrelevant distraction it was. “But we never got to why or how it was happening, since…”

Alberto didn’t seem to realize it, but his hand was drifting up towards his neck. Gianluigi winced and little sparks of pain rose where his nails dug into his arm. “Because I…prefer you. And that’s not normal. It’s not…in accord with the purpose of angels. We’re to carry out the will of Heaven, and not to play favorites because that’s unjust. So I was trying to not feel that, and trying to put it outside of myself, and instead I put my magic in you. That was my fault.”

“But they said you didn’t know what you were doing, probably,” Alberto said, blinking.

“I didn’t. But that’s why…if I’d known what I was trying to pretend wasn’t in me, I could have done something else about it. But I failed to recognize what it was, and not only that, kept failing to do it—it was willful ignorance and it caused your death.” That wasn’t too obscure, Gianluigi thought. It made sense to him, and Alberto’s expression wasn’t confused.

“So you brought me back because you wanted to fix what you did, and you had to lose Heaven for that.” Alberto’s voice hiccupped slightly on the last few words. He looked away, roughly pushing his hand over the side of his face, then slid his fingers back to wrench at his hair. “But look, I’m just a person, and I could’ve—I knew something weird was going on, and I didn’t tell anybody for a while when I could’ve, and I didn’t even run when that thing was staring at me, and I mean, you didn’t have to go that far. I just—you gave up _Heaven_ , Paolo said. And you know, I like being alive, but I just don’t think…I was worth that.”

Then he looked back at Gianluigi and his eyes were wet with tears. He moved his hands around a bit, and his lips opened and closed as well, but no more words came out. He just stared at Gianluigi, desperately sorry for something that—that didn’t even make sense to Gianluigi.

But it _hurt_ to look at Alberto the way he was, hurt like a hand gripping the back of Gianluigi’s breastbone and pulling as hard as he could. Gianluigi saw his actual hand go out, but diverted it to his shin, which he gripped tightly as he tried to concentrate, to make the words come. “Alberto, bringing you back, that was because you shouldn’t have died in the first place. Giving up Heaven wasn’t the same thing. If I hadn’t given up Heaven, that wouldn’t have been a mistake because it would only be righting the natural order. But it would have meant I would have had to let Fabio take you—that essentially I’d be knowingly responsible for your death. And…and I couldn’t do that, because I think more of you than I do of Heaven.”

“But my God, why? I’m just—me. I flunked out of veterinary school, I don’t think I’d keep up at work if Paolo and Sandro didn’t like me for some reason, I…I don’t even know enough to run when a gigantic dog with huge teeth is staring at me!” While he’d been speaking, Alberto had risen up, but now he fell back, wheezing a little. He weakly flapped his right hand. “Why would you care that much about me?”

“Because I love you.” Gianluigi paused, searching frantically for a better phrase, but couldn’t find one. He stared at his hands. “I don’t know how to explain better than that. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I can’t understand it either. I—I love you.”

Alberto was silent for several minutes. After the first few seconds, the sound of their breathing began to expand in volume till it seemed to fill the room with intolerably stifling loudness. But in spite of that, Gianluigi couldn’t quite bring himself to lift his head. He did want very badly to cover his ears, but he could feel Alberto’s stare, if not see it, and he suddenly didn’t want to make the man think any worse of him. Actually, he had no idea what Alberto thought of him.

“But you don’t…even really…know me. Well, aside from how I made a mess of your wing,” Alberto finally said, very softly. Then he laughed, high and short and nervous. “Wait, but I thought angels didn’t. Do that. I know Sandro and Paolo…but they’ve already fallen.”

“They don’t. They aren’t even…angels don’t function that way.” For some reason, Gianluigi found himself reluctant to admit to that. He thought it wouldn’t be necessary to angels, and anyway, God’s choices in creation weren’t to be questioned, but it was odd to admit angels _couldn’t_ do something. “That was why I kept pretending I wasn’t, but I—am. I wanted to fall. I wanted to be with you, more than I wanted Heaven. It wasn’t a choice. I had to do it. I couldn’t lose you.”

No response came from Alberto, but this time Gianluigi had to look up. He found the man staring at him, hands limply hanging at the sides, in shock and comprehension and…and there was something else, something Gianluigi couldn’t read.

So he moved forward to see better. The dizziness was gone, though the fatigue remained, lying in wait till he got onto one knee and then making the arm he had braced against the floor weaker than he’d expected. Gianluigi collapsed a little in that direction before he managed to smack his forearm into the bookcase and stop his fall. He still ended up tilting much closer to Alberto than he’d expected, the man’s shoulder blurring across his field of vision—and then sharpening as Alberto stuck a hand under Gianluigi’s arm.

They both froze, a gasp sticking to the roof of Gianluigi’s mouth. Even through his shirt, he could feel the warmth of Alberto’s fingers, the way their pressure changed as they angled over his ribs. The thumb was crooked up so its knuckle just grazed the underside of Gianluigi’s bicep. Gianluigi closed his eyes, then slowly opened them. Then he looked up, and Alberto’s face was only a few inches away, the mouth pulling insistently at Gianluigi’s gaze.

But the eyes were wrong, strangely…sad. And after a moment, Alberto reached up and put his other hand against Gianluigi’s cheek, and though the touch made Gianluigi’s eyelids flutter, he still was too puzzled by Alberto’s expression to fully appreciate it.

“I had no idea,” Alberto finally said. He looked away, his hand sinking so it more cupped Gianluigi’s jaw than his cheek. “I just…never really thought about it. About you, that way. I’m—I’m sorry.”

Gianluigi was looking at the floor before he even realized he’d moved his head. He couldn’t bring himself to leave Alberto’s hands, but he almost wished he could because the pain that had suddenly sprung up in him was agonizing. And it wasn’t merely a throb in his chest or a limb, but it was a bitter taste in his mouth and a stinging in his eyes, and…and he wanted to curl up around himself without really knowing the reason for it.

“I’m sorry. No, I just—I don’t hate you, and I like you, I liked it when you came by and talked, even if I think I always made you mad at the end, but I—I don’t know. I’m tired and this is—” Alberto nervously laughed without humor again “—so much. I can’t even…I…I don’t know, can I get back to you on this? Oh, fuck, that sounds so stupid. I’m sorry.”

His hands moved, the one slipping from under Gianluigi’s arm to Gianluigi’s shoulder while the other stroked at Gianluigi’s cheek. Then both of them were cradling Gianluigi’s head, and he still hurt but the feeling of Alberto’s palms was so…it was good, even knowing that it might not mean to Alberto what it did to Gianluigi. And if Alberto had been dead, Gianluigi would never even be able to see the man, and that—that by itself, he loved so much.

“I’m sorry! I really am, I just—”

He should stop saying that, Gianluigi thought, and that urge to do something came back. And Gianluigi just…lifted his head and leaned forward, and then touched Alberto’s mouth with his own. Warm. Warm and a little yielding, slack enough so there was a trace of the wetter, hotter inside and something about that echoed in Gianluigi’s gut, making it tense, but in an oddly pleasant way.

He sagged abruptly a bare second later, his lips still tingling. Then he looked up and regretted his thoughtlessness. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking again, but you—this isn’t your fault. None of it’s your fault. I…you can do what you think you need to. But I wanted to tell you, so you’d know what was the matter for once.”

Alberto stared at him, that shocked look slowly fading. His hands had fallen from Gianluigi’s face, but now they rose again, till they were nearly chest-high on Gianluigi. Then they dropped, and then finally lifted to lightly pinch the folds of Gianluigi’s shirt. “I really need to sleep,” he said quietly, anxiously, as if he still thought he should feel guilt. “But I don’t want to wake up and find you gone. I just want to figure this out, and I—I need to sleep.”

“All right,” Gianluigi said after a moment. His throat was a little tight, but not because he was forcing out falsehoods. “I won’t leave again.”

And Alberto looked at him, and the relief on the man’s face was—Gianluigi smiled a little at the beauty of it. He had to. He couldn’t help it, and moreover, he didn’t want to help it.

* * *

From what he’d observed of human behavior, Gianluigi was under the impression that him sleeping on the couch, or at least separately from Alberto, was the appropriate thing to do, but Alberto insisted he take the bed. The man was yawning and stumbling, his eyes unfocusing every so often from fatigue—how Gianluigi hadn’t noticed the red cobwebs in them earlier, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to fail at that again—so Gianluigi finally agreed. But he made Alberto take one side, explaining that angels did sleep, but usually standing up so he wasn’t going to move around and the space would otherwise be wasted.

Alberto was reluctant right up to the moment his body was fully on the bed, and then he immediately fell asleep. Gianluigi took a little longer as the mattress was a little short for his legs and he needed to curl himself carefully along the headboard in order to fit all of his body onto the bed without bumping Alberto.

Then he settled down for the night. He happened to be positioned so he could look down on Alberto’s face, on the way sleep smoothed the man’s forehead and the planes of his cheeks smoothed and the way it made the dark puffy rings beneath his eyes sag even more. He probably shouldn’t have been doing it, but…he laid his head on the pillow, and looked on till his eyes closed by themselves. He wouldn’t have purposefully closed them.

* * *

When a sunbeam on his eyes finally woke Alberto, he was quite warm, almost to the point of being overheated, and oddly compressed. Something was laying against him, and over him in places, and also there was hair sticking into his nose—oh. _Oh_.

Alberto gingerly lifted his chin from the head snugged up against his throat, then looked around. Gianluigi had started over on the other side, and he’d made sure himself to be as far from the angel as he could without actually falling off the bed, since Gianluigi definitely had been going to need as much of the bed as he could get, but they’d both rolled into the middle. Their legs weren’t too tangled, with Alberto’s foot overlapping Gianluigi’s calf, but Alberto’s—he flushed and bit his lip, then carefully eased his hand off Gianluigi’s hip. Then his foot off the angel’s leg, and then he reached down while awkwardly putting all his weight on his hip to untangle Gianluigi’s hands from his shirt. That done, he squeezed his way backward off the bed.

That didn’t go so well: Alberto got more of his torso off than his legs, noticed the mistake too late and fell. He rolled onto his hands and knees, wincing, then gasped and sat up to look.

But Gianluigi, from what he could tell, hadn’t stirred a bit. Which was…well, it wasn’t like Alberto had a good standard of comparison, but he was a little worried, since usually Gianluigi seemed so alert. And last night, when he’d suddenly popped back into Alberto’s living room, he’d been so grey in the face…Alberto hesitantly leaned over the angel, and then even more hesitantly held his fingers before Gianluigi’s nose.

He was still breathing, pretty slowly but the puffs of air were there. Still, that didn’t satisfy Alberto and so he very, very lightly touched the side of the angel’s jaw.

And Gianluigi moved, lifting his chin slightly before tipping his face further into the pillow so more of his jaw pushed up against Alberto’s fingers. Alberto immediately froze, but then all Gianluigi did was slump down again, his hair changing its fall to cover his eyes instead of his ears. He…he looked a lot younger. Or no, actually before Alberto hadn’t really pegged an age on him, because he’d just been so _present_. Kind of like a thunderstorm in the room.

But now he looked like he had an age, maybe only a little older than Alberto. Beneath Alberto’s fingers the line of Gianluigi’s jaw was firmed by the bone, but the skin was soft and yielded to the pressure of his fingertips. Gianluigi didn’t have stubble, and when Alberto looked closer, he saw that there weren’t even the tiny pits where the hairs would be. Come to think of it, Paolo and Sandro never looked less than freshly shaved either.

Alberto slowly pulled back his hand, then held it cradled in his other one against his chest as he gazed down at Gianluigi. He bit his lip, awake now and thinking.

Then he reached over again and pulled the blankets over the angel. He ducked into the toilet and got halfway through his morning routine before he realized what the sunlight meant and skidded back out to check the clock. Then he groaned—and Gianluigi still wasn’t reacting.

After a bit more thinking, Alberto went back into the bathroom and hurried through the rest of shaving. He threw on his clothes, checked the snail and snagged his phone from where it was beside the jar before ducking into the next room. Then he called Paolo’s office number, but only got the machine; Alberto left an apologetic message for missing a day, then dialed Figo’s number. “Hi, it’s Alberto…I, um, didn’t interrupt anything, did I?”

*Just breakfast,* Figo mumbled. In the background was the clatter and clink of plates and silverware, and the distinct holler of a waitress yelling orders intruded at one point. *How are things? I’m assuming Gianluigi ended up back at your place, since you didn’t call back.*

Alberto blinked, then winced as he remembered. “Oh, sorry. I should’ve done that, but…it got kind of complicated. And then I fell asleep, but I’m sorry. I hope you didn’t stay up waiting too long.”

*I was up, but not…you know what? Just come out and cross the street,* Figo sighed. His voice faded, and then he scolded somebody for turning the sugar at the next table into salt.

“I can’t. Gianluigi’s…he went to sleep, but he’s not waking up. Well, I haven’t actually tried shaking him, but I’ve made a lot of noise and he’s not moving or anything. Is…is that normal? He was fine last night,” Alberto asked. Which wasn’t completely true, and Alberto didn’t really want to talk about that over the phone, but…it might be important. He had no idea, and by now he thought it was pretty clear that when it came to angels, lots of weird things ended up being really important. “He doesn’t—he looks okay aside from that. After he got back last night, he looked really tired, so we…we talked a bit, and then we both went to sleep. That’s it.”

Long pause. Somebody asked if he should go up, and…that was Cesc telling him to shut up and wait till Figo finished finding out what was the matter, because he hadn’t been around for lots of it because he’d been off bleaching his hair again. *If you were anyone else, I’d wonder, but you’re…painfully honest. So I’d say if he’s just not waking up but he looks fine every other way, his body is probably just forcing him to rest. He did a lot of things last night that he’s not really strong enough to do now. But come downstairs and we’ll talk about it.*

“Down…stairs?” Then Alberto remembered that he lived across from, and actually often ate at, a very good bakery-café combo. “Oh. But is it okay to just leave him? And…and why are you across the street? Did Paolo call you? Gianluigi said he went to talk to him.”

*It’s okay to leave him for the same reason I’m across the street, and have been since…what time was it?* Pause. *Three in the morning. Thank God this place sells triple-shot espressos. Come over, Gila. Cesc’s ordering you a chocolate croissant.*

Alberto hesitated a moment longer, glancing back through the doorway at Gianluigi’s legs. Then he took a few breaths and nodded. And then he realized he was having a phone conversation and winced at himself. “Okay, I’ll be there in a moment. And please say thank-you to Cesc for me.”

*No problem, Gila! Hurry up before it gets cold!* Cesc chirped. Then he told somebody to keep off the strawberry one, because that was his.

Well, Alberto did smile as he turned off his phone. He stopped when he had to go back into the bedroom to get his keys and saw the way the sunlight flowed over Gianluigi, but after a moment, he gave himself a shake and walked out.

* * *

The third voice turned out to belong to a tall, very blond fox-demon Cesc addressed as ‘Nando.’ He and Alberto weren’t formally introduced as he sloped off his chair and blended into the crowd just as Alberto was sitting down, but he seemed vaguely familiar.

“He was brunette the last time you met him. You were scratching his head when the hellhound came,” Cesc said, instantly reading Alberto’s confused expression. He pushed a plate with a croissant on it, then…nuzzled Alberto’s shoulder for a second. Then he went back to eating biscotti, and…well, maybe that was how fox-demons greeted each other? “It was the first time he’d been natural in years. And knowing ‘Nando, probably the last for this decade. I don’t get it, really…when he’s in fox-form, he looks like he’s made of solid butter.”

Figo snorted into his coffee, then set down his cup with a little more care than he really needed to use. Then he frowned, his fingers suddenly stiffening in the air, half-curled as if they were going to scratch something, and for a moment Alberto thought he saw a white streak leap between two of them, and that he’d heard a faint crackling above the bustle of the shop.

But then Figo relaxed, flattening his hand against the table as he leaned back to look behind Alberto. “I thought you said you were going to try and make them miss opening today.”

“Yeah, well, Sandro was almost there but Paolo kept going on about that asshole and how weird he was last night. Sorry, Gila, but he is,” Zlatan said. He dropped into the seat ‘Nando had vacated. “By the way, don’t know if you’ve called in yet, but you’ve got the day off with pay. And if you need more, Paolo says you can take your vacation time now.”

“Oh. Oh, thank you. And tell him thanks, please. But I probably just need today,” Alberto said, a bit startled. “I might need to go on flex hours for a while so I can help out Gianluigi if he’s got a problem, but I don’t think I need a vacation. And I’ve already missed most of the last two days.”

For some reason Figo, Zlatan and Cesc all looked oddly at him. Alberto was starting to get nervous when Cesc leaned forward—he didn’t have his ears out now, but if he had, they would’ve been perked straight up—and explained. “Um, Gila? That’s sort of because you _died_ two days ago. You know, usually people freak out about that kind of thing?”

Zlatan rolled his eyes. “On the other hand, he works with Sandro. He’s probably so used to the near-death experience that he didn’t notice when it went that little bit more—Figo!”

Who shifted back up in his seat so it was obvious whose foot just had made Zlatan wince. “Don’t talk about people like they aren’t here. Except yourself, because you’ll do that whether or not it annoys me…and all right, sometimes it is funny. But anyway…” Figo turned to Alberto “…what about Gianluigi? Oh, and ‘Nando went on watch, so stop fidgeting. He’s covered.”

Alberto just then noticed he’d been tapping his foot. He stopped, then hid his apologetic look by picking at his croissant when he noticed it seemed to annoy Figo even more. “Watch?”

“Well, apparently newly-fallen angels can get a little haywire with the magic. Oh, and while you’re at it, stop looking around. Everyone else is just hearing a conversation about Inter last Saturday,” Zlatan said. He lazily cracked two of his knuckles. “See, angels and demons come with their own powers, separate from what they get from Heaven or Hell, and they don’t lose that when they…blow the system or whatever. But apparently it takes a while for fallen angels to adjust to using them without Heaven backing them up—I wouldn’t know, because I didn’t have any problems, but Paolo says Sandro shorted out a couple buildings. And something with a hairdryer, but Sandro wouldn’t let him finish that story.”

“You’re probably safe. You’ve got some residue of Gianluigi’s powers from when he resurrected you, and everyone, even angels, has a reflex against hurting themselves,” Figo added, looking curiously at Zlatan. But the demon simply smiled back, and eventually Figo just snorted and picked up his coffee again. “That’s what’s making you sensitive to magic now, by the way. You can’t do anything, but you’re going to see a little more than you could before. And I think it’s permanent…I’m sorry, but nothing can be done about that.”

After a moment, Alberto shrugged and tore off another piece of his croissant. He’d noticed but not really thought too much about it, since he’d been seeing far weirder things lately. All considering, that little bit extra didn’t seem like too big of a deal—and he hoped he hadn’t just jinxed himself by thinking that. “Oh. But…so Gianluigi has this urge not to hurt me?”

“Reflex. A very basic one.” Figo paused, his coffee halfway to his mouth. He looked straight at Alberto, very levelly, so Alberto was hard-put not to squirm. “It’s not something that’ll come up unless say, he’s actually about to hit you with a fireball or something like that. Then it’d make the fireball veer off. But otherwise it’ll be dormant.”

Zlatan was staring at Figo, his smile gone. “Well, so _now_ you agree with me.”

“Oh, stuff it,” Cesc muttered. “There’s nothing wrong with being careful, or changing your mind when it’s obvious you should.”

“ _You_ stuff it. Or maybe I’ll take you by your tail and stuff you—” The rest of Zlatan’s retort was in one of those gravelly non-human languages.

But judging by the look on his face, it was one Cesc knew. Alberto quickly turned away as Cesc reared up, hoping the fact that they were in public would keep it from getting out of hand. As he moved, his gaze happened to cross Figo’s. The other man nodded, then leaned forward. “Sorry, we’ve totally gotten off-track. Demons aren’t much more for early mornings than people…but anyway, you were worried about Gianluigi?”

“Well, he did look really tired last night, so probably it’s just what you said it was. I was just…since he fell, and…you know, to be honest, I’m still trying to wrap my head around that,” Alberto said. He winced and ducked his head to look at his plate, then put up an elbow so he could rub at his eyes. His right one was burning a bit at the edges, like he had an eyelash in it, but when he pushed at it, it only seemed to make it worse. “He says he’s okay with it, but he looks like he’s having such a rough time. It just…makes me wish I could do something. I mean, I just can’t believe he did it in the first place.”

Figo drank more coffee without taking his eyes from Alberto. Then he put his cup down and wrapped both hands around it. “Alberto. You don’t have to answer if you don’t feel comfortable about it, but…has Gianluigi actually…mentioned why he did that?”

Alberto glanced sharply up at the other man, then dropped his gaze again. He watched his fingers punch holes in his, absently moving his elbow when Cesc, still arguing with Zlatan, bumped it. He nodded, then looked at Figo again. It seemed like the other man wasn’t going to push the point, but…well, Alberto really needed to talk to somebody. He wasn’t sure if it was okay, or even why he wanted to talk about it, but his head hurt and his eyes ached and he just thought he was going to explode if he didn’t. And he couldn’t explode. He had a lot depending on him being able to get up and at least _try_ to make a go of it.

“He said—he loves me?” It came out like a question even though Gianluigi last night had been pretty firm about it, to the point that Alberto had to accept the statement even if he couldn’t really believe in it. He sneaked a peek at Figo again, who was still just sitting there, not looking particularly surprised. “I…didn’t know, you know? I thought angels couldn’t even—he told me this other time that angels don’t get distracted by stuff like lust, so they can be fair judges. But he fell because of me, and he said it’s not my fault, and…and he didn’t even get mad when I told him I didn’t know what to do, and I didn’t want to mess things up for him again, so I just—we went to bed. Um, I mean, we went to sleep. We didn’t do anything.”

“Seriously?” Zlatan seemed to notice but ignored the dirty look Figo shot him. He twisted around in his seat to stare at Alberto. “The way that idiot is, I would’ve thought he’d explode the moment he actually was _able_ to. He’s so damn repressed…even _Sandro_ was all touchy-feely with Paolo before they fell.”

After a couple moments of silence, Alberto realized he was starting to look like an idiot just staring like that. But before he could even try to say anything, Cesc reached over and patted his shoulder. “Um, Alberto…look, don’t take this the wrong way, but we all kind of guessed Gianluigi had a crush on you. But that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, ‘cause one, you’re not, and two, it’s not like you could know what an angel with a fixation acts like.”

“But even with that, I—I should—I’m a person! I’m—I’m going to die anyway at some point, right? And he just gave up all that, and I—”

“Alberto.” Figo waited for a couple more seconds’ stammering, and even looked like he didn’t mind doing that. “Look. Whatever Gianluigi’s reasons, it was his decision to fall and the consequences of that are all on him, not you. Maybe angels don’t feel emotions like people do—though honestly, I seriously doubt that now—but they’re perfectly capable of reasoning out things. And anyway, is that really what’s bothering you? Or do you not actually like him?”

“No. I mean, no, I do like him,” Alberto blurted out. He stopped, then put his other elbow up on the table so he could rub at his face. “I like him—I like him a lot…it’s just I never thought anything could actually happen. But he—gave up _Heaven_ , and what can—what could I do that’ll make up for that?”

Somebody rubbed his shoulder again, and when Alberto looked over, Cesc was pulling his legs up onto the seat so he could reach farther to get Alberto’s back as well. “Hey, if he’s okay with what he did, he probably thinks you make up for it already. Besides, if he turns out to be some jerk who doesn’t know what he’s doing, you can always come and stay with us.”

“Yeah, really smooth,” Zlatan snorted. He grinned a little too toothily at the annoyed face Cesc turned on him. “Leave the poor kid alone. And anyway, if it’s going to come down to sex, I have to go with angels. No, don’t even—just in general. Listen, Gila, angels smell nicer, and they can hurt you but it’s not their default, you know? You fuck a demon, you have to worry about them trying to set you on fire during foreplay, there’s always some extra limb or tail popping up that you practically have to rip off to get anywhere…”

Cesc began to wrinkle up his face, but when Zlatan said the bit about ripping things off, he dropped back in his seat, looking alarmed look. He stared at Zlatan as his hands slowly slid behind himself, as if he were trying to protect—oh, right. He usually had a tail.

“This is not coming down to sex, and anyway, there’s nothing inherently more dangerous about doing that with demons than there is with anybody else. Not if you do it right, and then the tails aren’t a bad thing to have around,” Figo pointedly said. He jerked up his mug and took a long swallow as Cesc looked relieved and Zlatan muttered something about him being a weird human, then put his coffee down as he looked back at Alberto. “Look. Forget about the details. They’ll work themselves out when they come up. What’s important is…are you happy when you see him? And how sad would you be if he left?”

“I thought about that already, actually,” Alberto said after a long moment. He looked back down at the table, pushing his hands into his hair. Then he pulled those down and pressed them over his knees. He was still tired, and still didn’t know what he was doing, but…well, Figo was a smart guy, and he had a good point. And it wasn’t like Alberto wasn’t already used to having no idea what was going on, anyway.

Figo coughed, and when Alberto looked up, the other man raised a brow. “So?”

Alberto rubbed at his knees. “Um, so how much do I owe you for the—”

“No, no, it’s on me. Come on, you saved me from the hellhound. The least you’re gonna get is free pastries for life,” Cesc said. He also shook his head, stopped that to beam at Alberto, and then switched his expression to concerned, and did all of that in about one second. “But seriously, if it doesn’t turn out okay? You’re covered, all right? Remember that.”

“Thanks,” Alberto said, smiling. He sat there a moment longer, but there wasn’t really anything else to say, and he was letting his mouth hang open like an idiot. So he shut that and began to rise, but then he thought he owed Figo a thanks too, and quite a few apologies as well.

And he started to give them, but the other man blinked once, set down his cup and then actually got up and walked Alberto to the door. Then he gave Alberto a gentle but firm push through that, and before Alberto could say anything, disappeared back into the coffeeshop. Alberto watched him go, then glanced across the street. Then he started to try and find Figo in the busy café again, but when he was halfway turned about, he gave himself a good shake. He looked up at his apartment again, and then—went back across the street.

* * *

Gianluigi was still asleep when Alberto came in. Alberto stood over the bed for about a minute, making sure, before he looked around the room and then into the bathroom. There was a towel puddled on the floor, and splinters still piled up to one side from where he’d basically…well, bashed the lock halfway out with a hammer.

He’d better clean that up, he decided. It was amazing that he hadn’t managed to get a sliver in his foot yet, but he doubted that that would last long. So he got the dustpan and broom from the closet, and then he went over the whole bathroom floor with some cleaning wipes to get any little bits of wood he might’ve missed.

Alberto was looking rather helplessly at the smashed lock when he heard something creak. He turned around, lifted his foot, and then changed his mind and ducked back into the bathroom. There he filled up a cup with water, and then he went into the bedroom.

He took a seat on the edge of the bed just as Gianluigi, who’d pulled himself into a sitting position, seemed to really be focusing on things. The angel blinked blearily, rubbed at one eye, and then turned to face Alberto. And his face…Alberto dropped his gaze, then pressed one hand to his warming cheek. He still didn’t understand what Gianluigi was looking at; he’d just seen himself in the mirror a moment ago and…well, it’d only been him.

“My mouth tastes…awful,” Gianluigi said after a few awkward moments of silence. He shifted a little, his hands sliding over each other in his lap. “But I haven’t eaten anything.”

“That happens every morning to people. I’m not really sure why, but…um, have some water. It usually helps me.” Alberto held out the glass, and after a couple seconds, Gianluigi took it with his fingertips. He was watching Alberto very closely, which to be honest made Alberto badly want to squirm, but he noticed that Gianluigi stiffened up every time Alberto twitched so he tried not to do that. “So does brushing your teeth, but well, there’s only my toothbrush and I don’t think you want to use that. It’s pretty old anyway—I’ve been meaning to buy a new one, but every time I go to the drugstore, I always forget and get something else instead.”

Then Alberto finally managed to get control of his mouth, because God, he was babbling. Not that Gianluigi seemed to care—the angel frowned at the water, then tentatively took a sip—but that sort of just made Alberto notice himself even more. He slipped his hand around behind himself while Gianluigi was drinking so he could dig his nails into something without making Gianluigi nervous.

“That’s better,” Gianluigi said, lowering the glass. He looked at Alberto, then at the window. His eyebrows shot up.

“You…you seemed like you needed it, so I didn’t wake you. Was that…are you okay?” Alberto asked.

Gianluigi’s gaze flicked to him, then just as quickly flicked away. Then the angel put out his hand and started to get up on his knees, moving towards the other side of the bed. He sort of didn’t look at Alberto while his head kept turning like he was going to. “I—I need to use your bathroom. But thank you for the water.”

“Oh. Oh, okay. Um, you’re welcome.” Alberto watched the angel get off the bed, grinding his nails into the small of his back. This wasn’t going well, and he was really terrible at this and he really—should say something. _Something._

Except he didn’t, so Gianluigi stumbled a bit as he put his feet on the floor, then walked to the bathroom as if he had a bad cramp in one leg. Then the door shut, and then Alberto couldn’t help it and flopped down face-first.

“Oh, God,” he moaned. He squeezed his eyes shut as he pulled up his hands, then pressed those hard into the blankets…which were still really warm. And they sort of smelled like—like—Alberto couldn’t really decide what it was because it kept changing on him, one moment like fresh-cut grass and another like that clean smell after a spring rain, but it was really nice. It wasn’t his laundry softener either.

Maybe it had a calming effect too, because gradually Alberto started to relax. He still felt like a complete idiot, but more in the usual resigned way instead of like he was so awful he just needed to go bang his head on something hard. It wasn’t like that ever actually made him better, after all.

The toilet flushed, and then there was a long stretch of silence before the sink-water began to run. Which it did for so long that Alberto began to think maybe he should ask Gianluigi if he was all right again, and while he was at it, be less of a moron, but the water turned off before he could get up. So he let his weight sink into the bed again; he’d have to get up before Gianluigi came out, but he thought another couple of seconds couldn’t hurt. Maybe he’d even think of a good idea in the meantime.

Except he never did, and the door swung open while he was still staring into the blankets. Alberto flinched, then hastily pushed himself up. He looked at the bathroom, but Gianluigi wasn’t there—because he was only a couple centimeters away, on the bed and staring at Alberto. “Gah!”

Gianluigi jerked back, then settled there, looking…sort of awkward, his elbows at uncomfortable angles to his body. It was odd seeing him that way, since even as a fallen angel, he still moved with the kind of economy of motion that Alberto could only dream of, with the way he was constantly pulling up _just_ short of doorknobs and counters and rolling carts. “Did I scare you?”

“A…a little,” Alberto admitted. He fully sat up, pushing the hair out of his eyes.

“I’m sorry. I’d—I don’t know what I did, but I’ll try to stop,” Gianluigi said. He was staring at Alberto again, like he wanted very badly to…to do something, and Alberto’s mind couldn’t really get more specific than that without laughing at itself.

Alberto pushed a fold of blanket off his knee. “No, it’s okay, pretty much everything does that to me.”

“But I don’t want to do that.” Then Gianluigi looked away, grimacing. He was pressing his hands hard into his thighs so their knuckles were whitening, and that reminded Alberto of something. “I’m sorry. I…don’t have complete control now.”

“Really, it’s fine. You’ve gone through a lot lately, and anyway, I just get scared at really stupid—”

“I don’t want to do something that’ll hurt you,” Gianluigi abruptly said. He paused to take a slow breath, then looked back at Alberto as if he were nervous enough about what he’d see. “I wasn’t thinking—because I was trying so hard to ignore everything about it, but I think now…I was unjust to you even before I caused your death, wasn’t I? I’m sorry about that. And I can understand why you wouldn’t want to form—some sort of—”

His hands rose and began to move about as he talked. At first they sort of looked as if they might be gesturing with his words, just not in a language Alberto knew, but then their movements got broader and faster, till Alberto was afraid that the angel—he grabbed one of Gianluigi’s wrists as it swung near him.

Gianluigi immediately fell silent, his mouth still partly opened around a word. His eyes suddenly looked very large and their lightness struck Alberto again: looking at them was like looking at little bits of the winter sky, shining brilliantly in the relative darkness of Gianluigi’s face. They were focused tightly on Alberto, and when Alberto moved, sliding a little closer so he wasn’t yanking so hard on Gianluigi’s wrist, they seemed to widen like they wanted to suck him up.

“I didn’t think you were…I liked it when you came by. I was really worried about your wing, but it was nice talking to you, even though I wasn’t sure if I was that good a conversationalist.” Alberto laughed at himself, then cut that off with a throat-clearing when he realized how high-pitched he sounded. He also lowered their hands, since if his arm was feeling the strain then Gianluigi’s had to be too; Gianluigi breathed in sharply and Alberto snapped his gaze to the stretch of mattress between them. “You never called me an idiot, or got impatient when I asked a stupid question. I’m pretty sure you did get frustrated with me, but…so anyway, I do like you.” God, that sounded so idiotic. “I—goddamn it, I’m so bad at this. I’m like the last person you want to teach you about what it’s like being human, because I’m lousy at it. I—so I’m trying to say—oh, _fuck_.”

He dropped Gianluigi’s wrist to push the heels of his hands against his forehead. Then he dragged them back over the top of his head as he looked up, and…Gianluigi was still sitting there, not tapping his fingers or rolling his eyes or anything except looking back at Alberto.

“Fuck,” Alberto said again. Mostly sighed it, really, because he just wasn’t getting through this sensibly. He raised his hands, then sort of stuttered them through the air as he changed his mind about lowering them and then, for some reason, grabbed Gianluigi’s forearms instead.

Gianluigi’s lips abruptly pressed together, and under Alberto’s fingers his muscles tensed up. He didn’t seem to be breathing now as Alberto fumbled on his knees till he was kneeling right in front of the angel, but then Alberto sat up so their faces were nearly touching and Gianluigi did breathe then, letting out a tiny hissing exhale.

“I just—” Alberto paused, but still couldn’t make any sense even in his own head. So he leaned forward and pressed his mouth against Gianluigi’s instead.

Something abruptly smacked his side and he froze. He felt Gianluigi’s arm move, trying to pull that hand away, and then Gianluigi’s mouth opened as he tried to say something, and Alberto just sort of—sort of kissed him. It was pretty bad: Alberto was mostly just pushing at Gianluigi’s lips, which were soft but which weren’t moving, and every second was like another nail beating into his head just what a bad idea this was and how badly he’d fucked it up, and then—then Gianluigi sagged, both his hands grabbing at Alberto. He actually fell enough so that their mouths were separated, and Alberto had to shove his hands under the angel’s arms to keep him up.

After the first second, Gianluigi was helping with that, which was good since he was a lot heavier than Alberto could really manage on his own. And also because Alberto had been absolutely terrified that he’d—maybe kissing triggered some weird magic thing that meant he’d just killed Gianluigi, except that couldn’t be it since Gianluigi was still moving, lifting his head. And breathing, that coming in hard fast puffs that tickled up Alberto’s neck.

Then Gianluigi was looking at him, and then leaning in, and they were kissing again. It was a little better since Gianluigi was moving his lips, trying to push back, but it still wasn’t—actually, it wasn’t kissing. There was too much mismatching, so their teeth were clicking and snagging on soft flesh, and Gianluigi was…not really…getting it. He seemed to realize that too, and started to pull away, but Alberto grabbed the back of his head and just—pressed their mouths together as hard as he could, so they couldn’t move. Even though Gianluigi tried, like he wanted to say something, but for once Alberto just held on.

Gianluigi stopped and after a moment, Alberto eased off a bit. Then he hesitated again, but the lips under his were perfectly still; the hands on his sides had gone very rigid, so that in places they weren’t even touching him because they hadn’t adjusted their curve. So…Alberto started to push forward again, very slowly, opening his mouth a little and then closing it, and Gianluigi’s fingers began to fit themselves to him. He molded his lips around Gianluigi’s lower lip and sucked a little, and Gianluigi inhaled sharply and in the middle of that his breath cut off.

Alberto realized he was gripping Gianluigi’s hair rather tightly and loosened up on that, then tentatively rubbed at the angel’s scalp. After the first couple of strokes, Gianluigi tilted his head slightly so Alberto could do that better, and then he started to move his mouth like Alberto was, only even more slowly and in short little bursts, like he was checking to see if he was doing it right before he went on. It was still sort of weird, but it was—Alberto decided he didn’t mind. He kept kissing Gianluigi, putting his other arm around the angel’s neck, and gradually Gianluigi’s bursts of kissing back got longer and more fluid, till finally it was something Alberto was enjoying. Quite a bit, actually.

But his back was beginning to ache from the strained way he was kneeling up, and come to think of it, he hadn’t been able to feel the foot he had tucked beneath himself in a while. So he got off that foot. He’d been aiming to just sit down on his ass, but he bumped into Gianluigi’s knee and that skewed him so his tongue slipped into Gianluigi’s mouth. Alberto pulled it right back out, but didn’t manage to do that before Gianluigi flinched. “Shit. Sorry.”

Gianluigi leaned back a bit, his lashes fluttering—he’d shut his eyes. He looked at Alberto and his gaze was a little hazy but in a good way, in a way that reminded Alberto of the nice feeling he got when he saw steam rising off a delicious stew. “What was that?” he asked. “I liked it.”

After a moment, Alberto finished sitting down. He needed the support. “Um.”

Okay, well, he hadn’t been doing very well with words, but…he took a deep breath, then dropped his hands to Gianluigi’s shoulders and tugged at those. Gianluigi immediately came forward, but the distance between them was a little more now because of their knees—the angel almost overbalanced and only caught himself by snatching his hand from Alberto’s side to the mattress. He looked really annoyed at himself, but Alberto didn’t…somehow this was going well and he didn’t want that to end, so he just moved over and slung his arm around Gianluigi’s neck. And then he used that to pull Gianluigi in for another kiss.

This time Gianluigi got it right away, but he seemed to concentrate so hard on that that he forgot about holding himself up. He fell on his side, his knee glancing off Alberto’s thigh; Alberto followed him down, meaning to check on him, but it wasn’t that far to Gianluigi’s mouth and—and he was really beginning to like kissing the angel. So he did that again. And when Gianluigi’s lips parted, tried sliding in his tongue again.

Gianluigi groaned, his hands fisting in Alberto’s shirt so hard that Alberto almost thought he’d accidentally bit something. But no, his teeth were clear of Gianluigi’s lip, and Gianluigi was kissing back hard now…so Alberto just got down on his side and kept doing that. It took a little less time for Gianluigi to catch on to this, and then Alberto had to gasp a few times himself. He ran one hand down Gianluigi’s back and the angel shivered, he let that hand come to rest on Gianluigi’s hip and Gianluigi bucked forward—anything Alberto did seemed to draw a reaction, and so strongly that Alberto was actually a little…it made him want to be even more careful. He wasn’t so scared now, and actually that twisty sort of tension was beginning to tighten up the muscles between his waist and his knees, but he hadn’t experienced anything like this before and he thought he should…protect it.

Which was kind of a weird idea, since Gianluigi was huge and had magic and probably would be able to handle anything once he got used to his new state, but then…Alberto broke the join of their mouths to look at Gianluigi. And the angel was trembling, his eyes tightly shut, and when Alberto touched one cheek Gianluigi pressed into his fingers like they were life itself, and maybe Alberto wasn’t just thinking like an idiot. God, he wasn’t going to fuck up this time. Please, God, he thought.

He laid the rest of his hand against Gianluigi’s cheek, then stroked down to curve it around Gianluigi’s neck as he leaned forward. Gianluigi lifted his chin, then snapped open his eyes as Alberto instead pressed his mouth to the side of his jaw. Those long black lashes fluttered wildly, then fell; Gianluigi’s hands were flattened out against Alberto’s ribs now, almost too hard to be comfortable. They shifted a little as Alberto continued kissing along Gianluigi’s jawline, till he reached the ear. He paused—one of the waitresses had complained to him at great length once about how much she hated it when her boyfriend licked her ear—and then experimentally grazed his lips against the earlobe.

Gianluigi inhaled, harsh and short, and then exhaled into the curve of Alberto’s neck as he jerked up his head. He pushed in his face, then rubbed it up and down; that and the fact that Alberto was craning anyway to get at Gianluigi’s ear again rolled them so Alberto was on top. He paused again, but it seemed like he wasn’t too heavy since Gianluigi just kept nuzzling. Still, Alberto moved his leg off Gianluigi’s belly so both his knees were on the bed. Then he hitched and surprised himself with a wavery moan.

He pushed himself up on his arms so he could see Gianluigi gazing worriedly at him. “Was that wrong?”

“Um, no, you just startled me. I…I’m just twitchy. Sorry.” Alberto bit his lip, then ducked down before he could embarrass himself any more. He distracted himself by mouthing along Gianluigi’s neck.

That made Gianluigi squirm and make oddly tiny noises deep in his throat, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute before the angel’s hand gingerly touched his thigh again. And Alberto did start again, even though he’d been half-expecting it, but this time Gianluigi just kept his hand there. Then he settled it in place, after Alberto had furiously made himself relax. He didn’t really do anything, just cupped the back of Alberto’s leg, but the light pressure was nice.

Those throat-noises had smoothed out a bit and joined out into one continuous rumbling, a little like the purr of a cat downtuned to bass level. Gianluigi was letting his head loll back, stretching his neck out beneath Alberto, eyes mostly closed, and so Alberto just kind of flipped up Gianluigi’s shirt-tail and slid his hand in to run it over the bare skin of Gianluigi’s waist.

He wasn’t really thinking they’d get too far, given that he was crap at this and Gianluigi didn’t really…know anything, but Gianluigi jerked as if Alberto had shocked him, his eyes snapping open and his whole body arching. His hands slid rapidly up Alberto’s back, then pulled Alberto down and God, but Gianluigi had picked up kissing really well. _Really_ well.

Something brushed at Alberto’s legs: Gianluigi’s knees as the angel pulled them up. He was still kissing Alberto, not so hard now but still with that sort of frantic edge, like he—Alberto tried to ease off, slow down, but his joints weren’t working too well, like they were melting on him. Maybe they were; he could feel a trickle of sweat running down his neck under his collar.

Gianluigi wouldn’t let him get back, but kept tugging, kissing, and then when Alberto at least turned his head so they were nuzzling at each other’s jaws, Gianluigi started talking. “Please, wait, please, I want—please.”

Alberto bit his lip again, hard so the blood came. He couldn’t answer because his tongue was pretty much melded to the roof of his mouth in the heat, but he tried—his hand was still beneath Gianluigi’s shirt and he petted the angel’s belly, trying to calm him down. Except that made Gianluigi gasp, his fingers gouging into the backs of Alberto’s shoulder, his knees clutching at Alberto, and Alberto just—he had to. He let Gianluigi kiss him again, stroking the angel’s cheek, and with his other hand he fumbled at their trousers. Gianluigi was still rubbing his knees against Alberto’s hips and that pulled down Alberto’s trousers and also his underwear almost the moment Alberto got his fly undone. And…and angels didn’t do underwear, apparently, because Alberto’s hand scratched past the zipper’s teeth to smooth heat-flushed skin.

He thought he’d killed Gianluigi, to be honest. The way the angel whipped up, his head actually cracking Alberto rather hard on the side of the jaw. Then Gianluigi fell back into complete slackness, so Alberto’s hand slid down his prick more from the lack of resistance than from any intention on Alberto’s part. Gianluigi stared dazedly up at Alberto, his mouth open just enough for a wheezing breath or two to squeeze through it. Alberto blinked—his eyes momentarily stung—before bending down.

Even he wasn’t startled when a few strokes did it, Gianluigi’s mouth shaking against his own as the angel spilled over his hand. He kissed Gianluigi through it, didn’t protest at the way the grip on his shoulders bruised him, and then laid down with his cheek against Gianluigi’s till the angel stopped trembling.

Gianluigi was still for quite a while, so Alberto busied himself with wiping off his hand on the sheets and then dabbing a bit at Gianluigi. He was still doing that when Gianluigi abruptly exhaled; Alberto looked up, then down as the hand on one shoulder dropped to bump at his. Then he—well, it was basically a yelp, but Gianluigi had just pressed his erection into his thigh, so he thought he had some justification.

“You’re still—”

“I can get it—”

“But I want to,” Gianluigi said firmly, looking up at Alberto. He pushed himself up on one arm, then glanced off to the side. Then he looked back, a little less certain. “I want—you to like it. Like me.”

After a moment, Alberto just kissed him. It worked a lot better than what he ended up stammering out most of the time.

Gianluigi didn’t turn that down, and rather clearly showed that he wanted to keep doing it, but he also kept nudging with his hand. Which didn’t do much, but right then not much was probably the worst thing—so Alberto finally grabbed Gianluigi’s fingers and wrapped them around his cock. A moment later he ended up really glad that Gianluigi was still trying out everything Alberto showed him in those short bursts, because that hurt—and that was better, Alberto thought as he finished adjusting Gianluigi’s fingers. Much better, a couple seconds later, and after that he just slid off to the side so he could lie on his hip instead of holding himself up. He tucked his head against Gianluigi’s shoulder and closed his eyes, letting his hand ride on the angel’s wrist instead of directing it, just trusting Gianluigi to see it through.

* * *

“I know that’s not all of it,” Gianluigi said.

Alberto paused at the side of the bed, where he was just finishing up tucking the new sheet in at the corner. Then he turned around.

Gianluigi had climbed back onto the bed and was sitting in the middle, his…very long, bare legs not really folded under his hanging shirt-tails. His gaze was steady enough, but that flush in his cheeks was taking a really long time to fade away. “I…I’ll get better. Good enough for that…if you’d like.”

“Um,” Alberto said. He was long past the point of hoping he’d stop doing that, but he could at least figure out how to vary up his confused noises, he irritably thought. “I would. But you know, that was really good by itself. Really.”

The set of Gianluigi’s shoulders slackened just a little bit, and as Alberto climbed back onto the bed, the angel unknotted his limbs enough to tentatively reach for Alberto. It was close to noon, and Alberto was getting hungry, but…he shrugged and slipped over to lean against Gianluigi. He could stand to put off lunch for a little bit.

Something bumped his cheek, and when he looked up, Gianluigi hesitantly kissed him. Surprised, Alberto didn’t respond and Gianluigi immediately backed off, but Alberto got his hands cupping the angel’s face before Gianluigi could look too worried. He stroked his thumbs along Gianluigi’s cheekbones, and after another moment, Gianluigi loosely wrapped his arms around Alberto’s waist.

“I know it’s not everything,” Gianluigi said quietly. “But I’ll get better.”

Alberto frowned, not quite getting it. Then he thought he did, and…and maybe he was getting better at reading the angel. He hoped so. “What I said last night—I really hadn’t thought about it. But I have been, and…I think I do love you a little already. And you’re already a lot more than I thought I’d get.”

Gianluigi looked down, a little bit of something suddenly gleaming at the corners of his eyes. Then he blinked, and that went away and suddenly he was gazing with a strange, strangely not-frightening ferocity at Alberto. “I’ll get better,” he said, and kissed Alberto again.

And Alberto knew to kiss back this time.


End file.
